


Tibimet Esto Fidelis

by SolitaryEngel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, No Underage Sex, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2019-09-28 11:38:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 46,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17182256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolitaryEngel/pseuds/SolitaryEngel
Summary: Harry knows he won't present. He's a boy, just a boy. He sees the silliness of sniffing and pairing up all around him and knows that at least -he- is safe from this.But Magic in all of zir wisdom had other ideas.*Much thanks to J.K. Rowling; several of the characters can be found directly quoting their lines from the book, though the surrounding prose is done by me, following along with her events.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Key scenes that explain where Harry is at when our story begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting the first chapter today! I might not post the next one until Breathe, One, Two is finished, but that wont take too long now.
> 
> This first chapter is playing catch-up, rewriting a couple key events to match up to my version of the A/B/O universe, so that I have to do minimal exposition to get the plot rolling. The actual story will begin with chapter two. Fair warning, I don't have a plan for this one yet, it's probably going to be less structured than Breathe is. I've got 16 chapters written so far, so it's going *somewhere* lol

# Chapter One

* * *

* * *

    “Know what house you’ll be in yet?”

    “No,” said Harry. He wished the boy would stop asking questions and _explain_ some of the things he was talking about, instead.

    “Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I’ll be in Slytherin, all our family have been — imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?”

    “Mmm,” Harry hummed. He didn't know what any of those words meant.

    “And how about when you present? I just know I'll be an alpha, there hasn't been any male omega in my family for generations, though we have had to disown a beta or two…”

   “Er —”

    “I say, look at that man!”

 

* * *

 

    “That’s just my brother, Percy, he’s a prefect, a beta — thank Merlin — could you imagine how stuck on himself he’d be if he were an _alpha…_ ”

    Harry frowned, trudging along beside his new friend to their new dorm. “What’s that? Alpha? Malfoy mentioned that too...”

    “You spoke to Malfoy before the train? Bully for you, mate. You know, alpha, omega, boy, girl.”

    Harry’s mouth worked. “...What…?”

    “ _I’ve_ read all about secondary genders,” Hermione jumped in, pushing Ron out of the way in her desire to impart knowledge. “They appeared in 1352, at a time when the wizarding population of Europe was at its lowest. It was the single largest case of unprovoked natural magic ever recorded — it is thought that the entire magical European population of humans would have died out over the next few decades had alpha and omega genes not spontaneously presented in the next generation of children… it was all to save our species, you see…”

    “But what _is_ it?” Harry asked, exasperated.

    “Secondary _genders._ Males that can produce young, females that can produce children predictably.”

    “Males already produce young…”

    “ _Omega_ men can get _pregnant,_ Harry _.”_

    “Can — what…?”

    “Like I said, it all had to do with preserving the species. _Our_ species. The genes are dormant when passed down to Muggles, of course, and I don’t expect _I_ will be beta or omega… but alpha men go absolutely _mad_ when an unmated omega is in heat, I should hope Mum and Dad don’t have the genes hiding in their ancestry…”

    “Well, I can’t imagine that has anything to do with me. I’m a boy, you can see,” Harry said, spreading his arms.

    “Well, you wouldn’t know, until you presented, would you? And that’s not until you’re thirteen or fourteen, like a second puberty. Were your parents alpha, omega or beta? They both have to carry the gene, or else you would just be beta, a carrier with no _real_ active effects.”

    “Betas do too have active effects,” snorted Ron. “Increased smell… ability to tell the ideal partner…”

    Hermione scoffed. “Yeah, but a beta male can’t carry _children_ , can’t calm a hysterical _omega_ like an _alpha_ can…”

    “What’s there to do?” Ron snorted. “Just grab them by the neck, anyone can do that.”

    Harry’s hand rose to his throat, disturbed despite his personal conviction that he was just a normal boy.

    “No, it’s the back of the neck, Harry, like a newborn kitten. But _Ron_ that’s not true calm, that’s basically just _paralyzing_ them…”

    Harry thought all this alpha, beta, nonsense was just that… _nonsense._

 

* * *

 

    “Where’s Fred and George?” Harry asked Oliver, swooping by on his broom.

    “They both presented as Alphas. They’re in the hospital wing for a week while their body adjusts to the change.”

    “Ah. Good for them, I guess.”

    “And shame for us. I want to see you practicing dives this week. Don’t think I didn’t notice you slipping last week in the rain. We’re going to run drills until you can perform at one hundred and ten percent no matter _what_ the weather.”

    Harry groaned.

 

* * *

 

    “Angelina and George are true mates.” Fred said suddenly, after a giant chug of his Butterbeer. They were celebrating another win in the common room, and somehow the twins had smuggled the beverages in.

    “What’s that?” Harry asked, frowning.

    “It’s another layer to the alpha and omega bond,” Hermione said softly. “An alpha and omega who magic has decided — for whatever reason — they they are best together, that they would complete each other…”

    “Like soulmates?” Dean asked curiously. His parents didn't have European ancestors, like Lee and _unlike_ Angelina, so he wasn’t at risk for this sort of silliness.

    “Not quite,” Fred said. Harry thought he seemed… morose. Lost. He wondered if true mates meant George was somehow sick, or dying. “But they’ll likely be spending all their time together now…”

    “I hope I never present…” Harry said with feeling.

    “Well, your mum was a muggleborn, right? So it’s not very likely that you will,” Hermione said comfortingly.

    “Either way, I’ll find out next year or the one after…”

 

* * *

 

    “Psst! Guys, look!”

    Harry didn't know who had said it, but everyone at their end of the table turned their head to watch as Fred and Katie stared at each other with a peculiar look on their faces. The first years had yet to be Sorted, and the two of them must not have sat together on the train because it was obvious that they were smelling the air around each other as if for the first time.

    “Are they…” Harry whispered to Hermione, whose hands were plastered to her cheeks in excitement.

    “Watch!” she exclaimed. Fred reached out and grabbed the back of Katie's neck, and it didn't look entirely gentle but she relaxed entirely into his chest as he did it, and lolled her head to the side as he stuck his nose into the skin of her throat.

    “Is he gonna bite her _here?”_ Ron asked, aghast.

    “Of course not; you know that's against the rules,” Hermione said primly.

    “Fred's never been much for the rules,” Ron grumbled, still watching the pair curiously.

    “Why would he bite her?” Harry asked. Fred, still grasping Katie's neck in his hand, brought her face to his own neck and petted her short hair as she took a deep breath of her own.

    “Oh, Harry, I forget how little you know,” Hermione said chidingly. “You don't even know if you'll present, haven't you read about it?”

    “Oi!”

    “There's a gland there, that produces the scent that tells alphas that the omega is open to claiming,” Ron cut in. Fred and Katie broke apart then, scrambling onto the bench to the cheers and back-slaps of their year-mates. Both were blushing, but glanced at each other with wide smiles as they accepted congratulations all around.

    “Well, _almost._ It produces the _hormones_ that tell the brain that the body needs to produce the attracting pheromones. It's right between the anterior and posterior cervical lymph nodes on the left side.”

    “Er… where?”

    “Here,” Ron said helpfully, touching the place where his neck met his shoulder, not directly on top, but an inch or so down towards his collarbone.

    “And you think Fred is going to _bite_ it?”

    “It's natural — well as natural as a magically induced secondary gender _can_ be, anyway…”

    “But, _why?_ ”

    “Damaging the gland there protects the omega from another alpha trying to claim them,” Ron put in.

    “Why don’t people have it surgically removed?”

    Ron made a sour face, but Hermione was the one who gave the answer. “Well, I’ve read that some people _do_ opt for _artificial_ scarring, if their true mate dies before they can be claimed and they don’t want to ever be with another person… but breaking the gland… it’s a mate-for-life situation. If it’s broken artificially, or accidentally, the dopamine and oxytocin… they won't _bind_ to another person. For an omega… there will always be something missing, even if they find another alpha who would take them.” Hermione’s voice was thick with sympathy.

    “So only omegas have it then?”

    “No, alphas have it too, but it’s much smaller, does less when it’s broken. Most mated pairs don’t break the alpha’s gland, it’s considered unnecessary. If something happens to the omega the alpha can always mate again, if it’s not broken. Omegas are natural nurturers… usually they want to make sure their alpha can always move on if he wants to.”

    “Makes for a stronger bond though, if the omega does it,” Ron said. “It's not all _pheromones_ — there's a magical side to the bond. Oh, here comes McGonagall. Lets see who we get this year. _Merlin_ , are they even smaller?

 

* * *

 

    “‘Dya hear? Malfoy is in the hospital wing — he presented as an _alpha!”_

    Ron screwed up his face at the first year who was tripping over his own feet to keep up with them.

    “Why would we care about that twat?” he asked incredulously.

    “The Quidditch match,” breathed Harry. Ron met his gaze, then they both turned to run to the Great Hall where Oliver would definitely be sitting down for lunch.

    “So you heard,” he said grimly when they found him. Fred and George and Angelina, Katie, and Alicia were present around the captain as well. “Good. That means less explaining. The match is to be postponed for a week while Malfoy is out of it… nothing we can do, McGonagall’s hands are tied…”

 

* * *

 

    They had enough points, it was up to Harry now to catch the snitch while they still had the sixty-point lead. And lo, there it was! Harry pressed forward on his handle, chasing after the golden ball when—

    “POTTER! HALT!”

    Malfoys voice seemed to reach inside his brain and yank it backwards. He pulled back on his handle, before shaking off the sensation and reapplying himself to the chase. What _was_ that? But the snitch was gone, now, whatever Malfoy had done had worked.

    “Penalty! Penalty to Gryffindor! Using alpha commands is strictly forbidden!” Madame Pomfrey called out at the top of her lungs.

    Harry narrowed his eyes at Malfoy, but he only smirked and flew off.

    “Should have known he’d use being an alpha to his advantage,” Harry growled. He’d have to practice with Fred and George to fully ignore alpha commands during practice. There was no way he was going to let that pointy-faced git take away the joy of his favorite sport…

 

* * *

 

  “ _Drop the Quaffle.”_ Harry dropped it.

    “Why is it so much harder to ignore you guys? Throwing off Malfoy took half a second,” Harry complained.

    “You trust Fred and George. And they’re speaking together. You don’t trust Malfoy. Just be glad you're not an Omega, there's no way to break the compulsion then, well, until mating bond takes hold and you can ignore _other_ alphas. Do it again.”

 _“Drop the Quaffle.”_ It fell from Harry’s grip again.

    “Again.”

_“Drop the Quaffle.”_

    “Again!”

_“Drop the Quaffle.”_

    “C’mon Harry! You can do this! _Again!_ ”

_“Drop the Quaffle.”_

    “We’re losing points here Harry, and that Hufflepuff seeker just presented alpha last month! If you don't keep a hold of that Quaffle, we’re going to lose! Again!”

_“Drop the Quaffle.”_

    “I’m not going to have the Quaffle in a game; I was distracted by how ridiculous that scenario was.”

    “Our Great Captain's pep talks are never ridiculous!”

    “Yeah, Harry, don’t be a sore loser because you keep—”

 _“Drop the Quaffle.”_ That time, Harry caught it with his fingertips right before he would have let it slip out of his grasp.

    “Hah! I did it!”

    “Okay. Now do it again.”

    “Ugh…”

 

* * *

 

    Professor Snape was _determined_ to take Sirius Black straight to the Dementors. No one could make him see reason, but Harry was certainly going to try. He blocked the doorway.

    “Get out of the way Potter, you're in enough trouble already. If I hadn't been here to save your skin _—_ ”

    “Professor Lupin could have killed me about a hundred times this year. I've been alone with him loads of times, having defense lessons against the dementors. If he was helping Black why didn't he just finish me off then?”

    “Don't ask me to fathom the way werewolves mind works. _Get out of the way, Potter.”_

    Harry gasped, falling to his knees as soon as an alpha command a _hundred_ times stronger than Fred and George's combined jerked on his mind. Snape took an alarmed step back as Harry collapsed further into his hands, and _whimpered_.

    “W-what is this?” Harry grit out through his teeth.

    “When did Potter present?” Snape asked, clearly startled, and Hermione spoke up right away.

    “He hasn't, he's just a boy. Sir, please, Pettigrew is _alive…_ ”

    “You _foolish_ girl, Pettigrew died twelve years ago.”

 _“Listen,”_ Harry pleaded, slowly and jerkily pushing himself back up onto his knees, then his feet. “Professor Lupin says he has proof. _Listen_.”

    Snape wavered, leaning forward slightly and then rocking back as he appeared to regain control. Ron, Hermione, Sirius, and even the bound and gagged Lupin were gazing spellbound at Harry, as if he'd just performed some amazing and wonderful feat.

    “ _..._ Fine. _Fine_ , then. Lupin, what _proof_ do you have that will satisfy that… _foolish_ schoolboy grudge you think I hold?”

    Released from whatever hold Snape had on him, Harry slumped against the doorframe. Maybe, _maybe_ they would learn the full truth now…

 

* * *

 

    “Well then, Potter, you have my attention. What do you want?”

    “Thank you, sir.”

    “For what, boy? I've now a three-year career of trying my best to keep you from throwing your life away, you'll have to be more specific.”

    Harry grit his teeth. Merlin, how he _hated_ Snape. Hated being called _boy_ in that exact tone of voice. But his whole life was set to change, now, thanks to the man shutting up and doing the right thing, and Harry _needed_ to thank him for his new good fortune.

    “Thank you for listening to me, in the Shack. Thanks to you, my parent's killer is dead, and I'll be able to live with someone who actually likes me. You hate them, and you hate me, but you listened anyway. And now… I'm free.”

    “It's not like I had a choice. Don't think I didn't notice somehow _you_ commanded  _me._ You'll be an annoyingly arrogant little alpha when you present, I'm sure.”

    Harry shuddered. “I really hope not to present at all. Anyway, that's all I wanted to say. Have a good summer… Professor.”

    Snape's voice reached him before he reopened the classroom door. “Potter… your parent's _true_ killer, he's not dead. It's only a matter of time before he shows his face again.”

    “I know,” Harry answered, turning his face just enough to speak over his shoulder, “— but you'll be there then, too, won't you?”

    Snape didn't answer, but Harry had left anyway.

 

* * *

 

    “We've made good headway on the drawing room today,” Sirius said proudly. “Molly's Doxycide recipe really does the trick.”

    Harry yawned widely in response, fighting the urge to dunk his head in his stew in exhausted protest.

    Sirius wasn't the best cook, and Kreacher was basically useless anyway, which meant days when either of them cooked Harry had a difficult time choking it down. His bowl was still half full, even though Sirius had been done with his for a while. Still, he wouldn't trade the jittery ex-convict for anything. He wasn't a _parent_ figure, but he was fun when the shakes didn't get him, and it was wonderful going most of a summer without the Dursleys — even if he still had to stay there a rotten month in the beginning.

    “Your birthday, tomorrow,” Sirius chirped, undaunted by his godson's fatigue. “Should we go to Diagon Alley and scare some witches again?”

    Harry laughed at this, and propped himself up higher. “Sure,” he said smiling. “Should make a game of it.”

    Sirius leaned forward, conspiring. “I bet I can make more witches scream than you can get to beg for an autograph.”

    “You're on, old man!”

    “Hah! Looking old will only help me! I won't even wash my hair, tangle it up a bit… that'll really get em going…”

    “Well, _I'll_ wear those robes you got me, with the front open and everything! See how many people notice you then!”

    “Ahh, you're still a little speccy thing… you can't attract more than I can frighten… I'd put money on it…”

    “Oh, yeah? How much?” Harry didn't really think he had any chance of winning, and he didn't really care about the outcome… he was just chasing his godfather's smile, anything to remove that haunted look from his eyes.

    “Alright, you two, let's leave the gambling until Harry's at least seventeen…”

    “Remus!” Sirius cried happily. “You should have told me you were coming over! I would have saved some of the stew for you!”

    Professor Lupin — or Remus, as he'd asked Harry to call him, now that he wasn't a teacher any longer — caught sight of Harry's frantic _‘no, no, no!’_ motions and pantomiming dying after taking a bite of the stew, and declined.

    “Oi! I'll have you know this is the best thing I've ever made!” Sirius pouted, and Harry laughed at the childish expression. Sirius's eyes sparkled, and he looked proud of the reaction he'd gotten.

    “I'm here to celebrate Harry's birthday, actually, and to help keep the celebrating tomorrow orderly…”

    “No scaring witches for you, Padfoot,” Harry snarked with a grin.

    “Aw, you babysitters are no fun…”

    Plenty of people had been in and out of Sirius's rowhouse in the week and a half Harry had been living with the man, each obviously checking up on him to make sure they were getting on alright. Sirius hated it to no end, but Harry was grateful. The first few days together he had crept about hoping not to do something to trip the man into anger or madness, not sure what to expect from someone who had just a month previous had been living on  _rats._

    But, it turned out, besides a penchant for suggesting the most unusual solution to every problem, the man seemed alright. Harry really liked having an adult he could tease, and pal around with. He'd never had that before.

    “What's on the agenda tonight? Harry, you look wiped.”

    “Yeah. No more doxies in the drawing room though. I… er, usually stay up till midnight in my birthday. I've never had anyone to celebrate it with before, and it's kinda my happy little ritual… or whatever.”

    “We can do that,” Remus said, smiling, gripping Sirius's shoulder tightly when the man might have spouted off about ‘those evil Muggles’ again.

    “We might see if there's a match on the wireless…” he suggested instead.

    “I've never listened to Quidditch on the radio,” Harry said, interested.

    “Then it's a plan.”

    They ended up listening to Ireland's match against Peru, cheering on their neighboring country's team as they dominated the whole way to a win. Then, waiting the remaining hour to midnight, they munched on biscuits and slurped warm tea to whittle down the time.

    “Oh look, just a few seconds now,” Harry said, pointing at his cracked watch face.

    “Should we count down, like New Year's?” Remus asked.

    “Yeah! How many seconds left, Harry?”

    “Er… four.”

    “Three! Two! One!”

    “Agghh!” Harry toppled out of his chair as at the stroke of midnight, pain lanced through his belly, his head, even his face.

    “W-what do we do?” panicked Sirius.

    “Call Hogwarts, we need Madam Pomfrey,” ordered Remus. Harry felt himself being rolled over. “Where does it hurt, Harry?”

    “Stomach,” he moaned. “Face… head… chest… neck…ow, hips...” Harry tactfully didn't mention his bum.

    “Merlin's beard…” Remus muttered. “That's a lot of places. I'm going to move you to the couch, now. Hold on there, Harry.”

    Remus heaved him up into his arms, and Harry groaned in pain. “I know. I know, son, Madam Pomfrey will be here soon…”

    “She's on her way… has to see Albus first to know where Grimmauld is,” Sirius said then. The haunted look was back on his face.

    “It's your cooking,” Harry joked.

    “Hah,” he responded weakly.

    The floo lit up then.

    “Alright, let's not crowd around, then. What an awful sick room _this_ is, dust everywhere…”

    Madam Pomfrey pushed her way through, her wimple askew and soot still clinging to her clothing. “Mr. Potter, the school year isn't enough? Now I'm set to see you in my care even during my holiday?”

    “Sorry,” he said, then moaned as a fresh wave of pain coursed through his abdomen.

    “Yes, that's what we're here for,” the witch said absently, waving her wand over him and registering the different results she got with interested hums and 'ahs.’

    “Well what is it?” Sirius finally snapped.

    “Congratulations, Mr. Potter. You are presenting as an omega. Take this,” she said, pressing a potion bottle to his lips. “You'll definitely want to sleep through growing your uterus and the straightening of your coccyx...”

    “Uterus!” he cried as Sirius exclaimed, “Omega!”

    “But Lily was a muggleborn, there's no way...” he heard Remus say reasonably as the potion drug him swiftly down to unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading... see you next time :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fourth year begins, and Harry is summoned to the Headmaster office.

# Chapter Two

* * *

* * *

    The first day back at Hogwarts fourth year was horridly wet and stormy. Half the Gryffindors were still shivering by the time Snape came around, scowling, with a note for Harry.

 

 

> 'Harry,
> 
>     'Please accompany me in my office after the feast. Oh, and if you haven’t tried them yet, Honeydukes has a fine line of Sugar Quills.
> 
> 'Yours sincerely,
> 
> 'Albus Dumbledore

    “Well?” Snape demanded, after Harry had finished. His stance was ever rigid, but his eyes darted all over Harry’s face with uncharacteristic interest as he waited for his answer.

    “Er — I’ll come,” Harry muttered. His mind jumped to the strange dream he’d had shortly after his birthday, in which a blond man and the high, crazed voice of Voldemort successfully killed a man, and mentioned killing him as well. His stomach seemed to sink down through the bench he was sitting on as he thought that Sirius must have told the Headmaster all about his dream, and he probably wanted to discuss it.

    As Snape spun on his heel and stalked away, a puff of wind cleared the ever-present _wet human_ smell away from the table and Harry’s nose caught a remarkably pleasing smell — entirely male, but suddenly such a thing did not matter because it was the most calming, enticing scent Harry had _ever_ encountered. Without meaning to at all, a strangled sort of wordless plea popped out from his throat, before he managed to convert it into a much less embarrassing cough.

    “All right, Harry?” Ron asked.

    “Er — yeah. Choked on my spit.”

    “Don’t blame you, with the bat swooping around like that… hair’s greasier than ever…”

    “Don’t you dare start on him, Ron!” scolded Hermione immediately. “It’s because of him an innocent man is out of prison and the _rightful_ betrayer got his just sentencing!”

    “Well if he hadn’t tied up Lupin in the first place…”

    “Then we’d all be _dead!_ Or have you forgotten it was _him_ who captured Wormtail, rescued us from certain death, _and_ kept Sirius in line on the way back to the castle?”

    “It wasn’t Moony’s fault,” offered Harry quietly. The unusual scent was gone now… and Harry quite missed it as his nerves over the upcoming meeting came back in full force.

    “No, we know,” said Hermione soothingly, “— but still the fact of the matter is we owe our lives to Professor Snape.”

    “I thanked him last year,” Harry said quietly. “He was alright… didn’t take points or anything.”

    “Oh, _good for you_ , Harry.”

    Ron rolled his eyes. “When is the sorting going to start,” he grumbled. “I’m _starving_.”

 

* * *

 

    Harry slipped off to the second floor as soon as the feast ended. His mind was aglow with thoughts of the upcoming Tournament — _imagine_! Somehow fooling the wizard in charge of judging the students, going through and winning… and then…

    Cho’s exultant face entered his mind, but it didn’t fill him with the usual giddy excitement he expected. He recalled that calming, _male_ scent from earlier and began to worry a bit that his… _interests_ might be changing because of his new gender when a thudding clunk sounded behind him, precisely in time with his own steps.

    Hair rose on the back of his neck as he spun, catching sight of the lumpy form of the new defence instructor striding along behind him.

    “Out of line, already, eh, Mr. Potter? Best be on your way to your tower before I am forced to take my very first points…”

    “Professor Dumbledore requested to see me, sir,” Harry said respectfully, warily regarding the heavily scarred man.

    Moody looked intrigued. “On the night of the Welcoming? Well best be on your way, boy. I’m off to the second myself…”

    Harry’s nerves returned with the limping Auror’s noisy steps beside him.

    “Interesting business, this Tournament, eh? Fancy you’ll try to enter your name?”

    Harry startled, not expecting the other man to speak again. “Er — no, sir. I’m not old enough to enter.”

    “I guess you’re right. Ah, shame. I’d like to see what the babe who defeated the Dark Lord could do… here you are then.”

    They were at the gargoyle protecting the entrance to the Headmaster’s office.

    “See you, then, Professor,” Harry said, but Moody still stood, waiting, his magical eye spinning lazily up and up even as his normal one stayed on Harry’s face.

    “Sugar Quills,” he muttered, avoiding looking at the eerie man again as the gargoyle leapt out of the way and he rode up the stairs. He heard the clunking fade away as soon as he knew his heels would have lifted out of non-magical sight.

    It seemed he arrived first, as he’d come straightaway before the Headmaster had even left the Great Hall. He tested the double doors at the top of the stairs, but they were sealed tight so he leaned against the wall tiredly, kicking his heels and waiting for the Headmaster to arrive.

    “Ah, my boy, have you been waiting long?” his voice jovially exclaimed not too much long later.

    “No, Professor,” Harry said. “Er — Professor Moody found me and escorted me half of the way.”

    In the office, taking their respective seats, they heard the stairs move again.

    “Ah! Alastor! One of my dearest friends. Tell me, what do you think of him?”

    “He is —” He might have said ‘interesting,’ but just before speaking he’d inhaled a huge whiff of that sedating scent, and the truth slipped out instead: “scary.”

    A slight growl came from the double doors, then, before swiftly choking itself off much like Harry’s peculiar little whine had earlier. His head swung around to see what had made the noise, only to see that Snape had just entered, head lowered so his hair blocked off any view of his face as he passed by Harry to take a seat on the right, well over by the wall.

    “What —”

    “I will gladly answer that, my boy, but we are waiting on just a few more people to join us first. Would you like some tea?”

    Harry thought he’d probably just as soon swallow his own tongue as attempt to sip tea, that’s how disconcerted he felt in that moment. That _smell_! “No thanks, sir.”

    “Severus?”

    Without speaking, the man’s hand cut across in a sharp, negative gesture, though the Headmaster only chuckled in response.

    “Good evening, Mister Potter,” his own head of house said next, briskly emerging through the doors and sitting on the opposite side to Snape, on Harry’s left, a few seats down.

    “Good evening,” Harry responded weakly. Every breath in — and he couldn’t stop himself from taking every breath deeper than the one before — he felt more and more drugged by that _amazing_ smell. The more he took it in, the more it changed him, and the less surprising it was that thinking of Cho earlier had left him feeling rather bland.

    “What is —” he tried again, “the smell…”

    “We will get to it in a moment, Harry,” Professor Dumbledore said again. “We are but waiting for just two more people to arrive.”

    “ _Late_ ,” growled Snape, and every hair on Harry’s body stood straight up at that dangerous tone. He’d never experienced such an immediate swell of goosebumps. Even his neck and _face_ prickled in that swift two-second sweep of sensation.

    “Hmm, yes,” agreed Dumbledore. “Tea, Minerva?”

    “Yes, thank you,” she responded graciously.

    The fireplace off to the side flared then, and out stepped Harry’s godfather, swatting soot from his robes as he left the flames.

    “Sirius?” Harry questioned.

    “Hey, Prongslet,” he answered, eyes twinkling with mirth. “Not here three hours and already in trouble? You’re breaking a few records here, I’d wager…” Behind him, the floo flashed again, and out stepped Remus.

    “And Remus?” Harry’s gut tightened with trepidation. “Er… does this have something to do with… with my _birthday?”_ he asked, whispering the last part far more bashfully than he thought he might have before he’d presented. He tightened his fist, wanting to be back in control of himself.

    “Well guessed, Mr. Potter!” exclaimed Dumbledore, smiling widely as he stroked his beard. “Ah, the young mind’s ability to put one and two together and get thr--”

    “Albus,” Snape warned, and Harry’s skin which _had_ resettled pebbled afresh.

    Sirius and Remus settled on either side of him, much like his parents might have, had they survived. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself with that scent, but with Remus’s wolfy smell emanating just as strongly beside him, the effect was completely suppressed. He ruthlessly shoved down the urge to whine at the loss. _He_ was in charge of his body.

    “I _do_ want to congratulate you, my dear boy, on your presentation… most curious, it is, since your mother… but any case, it is very important that we speak with you today.”

    “Okay,” Harry said, peeking around at Snape who was still hiding behind his hair, so much so that only the curved edge of his nose peeked out beyond the curtain of it. “Um, may I ask — why is Professor Snape here…?”

    This got the man's attention — indeed, though Harry had not meant to be insulting in _that_ particular moment, those sharp black eyes immediately pinned him fast, the lip curling away from his teeth in a sneer. “Why do you _think,_ Potter?”

    Harry really did let loose a mewl then, and he was struck with an urge to sink to his knees like he had in the Shack, baring his neck to the man. He gripped his armrests instead, pushing his back into the chair with his feet so that he didn’t succumb to the urge to slither down to the floor. The pain of the bars digging into his shoulder blades helped, but not enough to stop using every speck of his mental might.

    “Why… do I feel this way?” he moaned piteously, unable to even _complain_ properly.

    “Severus,” McGonagall said sharply.

    “Relax, Potter,” the man said, turning away from Harry’s gaze and hiding his face even further, then slumping his whole body towards the windows on the other hide of him. Harry immediately felt the push-pull inside him evaporate, and could not prevent the gasp of relief he felt.

    “Very curious,” Professor Dumbledore said, stroking his beard again.

    “Albus, this cannot be,” Remus spoke up suddenly. He too was gripping his chair like Harry had been.

    “What?” snapped Sirius sharply. “ _What’s going on with Harry_?”

    Albus cleared his throat again, glancing once at McGonagall, as if for support, before speaking softly to Harry once more. “What do you know of true mates, Harry?”

    Harry’s teeth clicked together with the altogether unexpected subject change. “Er… according to Hermione, they’re not soulmates, but magic has chosen them to best complete each other. Fred and George seem happy enough, anyway.”

    Professor Dumbledore steepled his fingers together, pondering. “Yes, I remember when Mr. Weasley and Miss Bell discovered their connection, last year. A joyous moment, to be sure. Usually,” he said, slipping into a tone Harry recalled from the different times that he had some important knowledge to impart, “the match will be in a similar age range, such as that. One should not have to seek out their match on the other side of the world, you see, or wait several cycles of heat for their intended alpha to come around — Magic’s intended effect would be rather pointless. Similarly, it is not _usual,_ in my living memory, to be matched with someone with whom there is not already an established _trust_ …”

    “No,” choked out Sirius. Harry's glance to Snape proved that the man was clenching his fists so hard that the whole of his hands were striped yellow and red. “ _No_!”

    Ignoring him, Dumbledore stared directly into Harry’s wide gaze. “Shortly after you entered the castle this evening, Harry, Professor Snape was able to scent you, and realized immediately who you were to him.”

    “ _Mate_ ,” whispered Snape fiercely, before hunching over further, away from the rest of the room.

    Sirius exploded. “I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!” Harry flinched away, hands coming up to his head to hide, before he forced them back to his lap. He would _not_ let his instincts control him.

    “Sirius, calm down,” Dumbledore warned, with a cautious glance over to Snape.

    “I cannot _believe_ this — you _can't_ _possibly_ — HOW CAN YOU TRUST THIS… SLIMY SLYTHERIN _DEATH EATER_ WITH MY GODSON?” he bellowed onwards.

    In a flash, Snape rose to his feet, wand out and pressed firmly to the base of his throat. Sirius had evidently been waiting for it though, and his own wand was out and placed at the professor’s temple.

    Snape’s lips were bared in his fiercest, most crazed snarl. “You _dare_ to —”

    “ _Test_ me, Snivellus, you lay _one hand_ on my godson and you will _wish_ I'd had my wand to finish you off quickly in Hogsmeade…”

    With the professor standing so close to him — in fact, partially over him as if to get between Harry and his godfather — that musky, drugging sent washed over him again. Distressingly, he felt his eyes begin to water.

    “ _Death Eater_?” he whispered then, feeling rather small at the moment. Snape spared a single glance for him before gripping his wand handle tighter in anger. A growl emerged from his chest, and instead of scaring Harry, it ridiculously helped pacify him.

    “Severus was cleared of _all charges,_ based on my _own_ testimony,” Dumbledore said then, a bit peevishly. “Now, boys, you _will sit down_.”

    Sirius faltered but held steady, and Snape was the first one to attempt to remove his wand, though he managed just a few centimeters. “I can’t,” he grit out. “Without the suppressants, his draw is too strong. I cannot back down from the challenge, Albus.”

    “Ah, yes, I see. Remus, if you will…”

    As if in a daze, the man stood, following Dumbledore's gestures and heading over to the far chair Snape had vacated.

    “Now, Harry, if you would scoot over one, yes, that’s helpful, isn’t it Severus?”

    “Yes,” the man ground out, as if against his will. Harry tucked up his knees to his chin, wrapping his arms around his shins as he settled into Remus's vacated chair.

    “Harry,” Sirius said then, turning pleading eyes to the boy, “please tell me it isn’t true. It’s not just _Snape_ who can tell... you can too… please tell me it’s not him…”

    Harry met Snape’s eyes then, and the man was regarding him carefully... blankly, face devoid of any feeling at all — but then his free hand rose, palm up before Harry’s face as if meeting a dog for the first time. Taking the offering for what it was, Harry carefully sniffed the man’s skin, scenting ginger, flobberworms, and horned slugs — things he did _not_ want too close to his mouth — but then stronger, more insistent underneath was that same intoxicating musk, what he knew now to be the essence of his — “ _Mate_ ,” he confirmed, lips parting as the insane urge to _lick_ the disgusting ingredient-covered hand struck him.

    Just as before, he quelled his instincts and let go of the hand, not knowing when exactly he’d grabbed hold of it, and jerked his head back up.

    “Pup,” whined Sirius. His arm fell away from Snape’s head as if he hadn’t the strength to hold it up anymore, and Snape stepped back as well, though far more fluidly.

    Harry’s face twisted as he regained control of his mind and remembered pressing his face into a hand that smelled like _flobberworm guts._ “Boil Cure potion?” he asked Snape with a grimace.

    Twin spots of color decorated the professor’s cheeks, much to the Headmaster’s obvious amusement. “Indeed.” He took his new seat — Harry's former chair — on Harry’s left, leaving Sirius standing alone before he too decided to take a seat on Snape’s other side, leaning away and forward to both avoid Snape and keep an eye on Harry at the same time.

    “I don’t — Professor, I’m _fourteen.”_ He didn’t know whether he was talking to Snape, Dumbledore, or even his head of house, or perhaps all three.

    “Have no fear, dear boy,” the Headmaster said softly. “Severus has no intention of flouting the Laws for the Protection of Underage Omegas, nor the rules clearly listed in the school Charter preventing a relationship with his student.” His voice was firm, uncompromising, a far cry from the genial, somewhat batty man he was used to. His eyes weren’t on Harry though, they pierced straight through his half-moon spectacles to pin Sirius, instead.

    “Then what’s the point of bringing us here, _Albus_?” Sirius demanded, undeterred.

    Snape’s hand clenched on his armrest afresh, and Harry tilted slightly closer to him before he could register and control the impulse. After a moment of questioning whether or not he deemed it necessary to move back upright, Snape moved over as well, pressing the length of his upper arm against Harry’s.

    Harry released a shaky breath as the Headmaster finished ensuring Sirius’s cooperation. The touch of their robe-covered arms was far too soothing.

    “Right, Harry, now that you have a working understanding of the situation, there are some deeper factors that we need to discuss. Severus, since it is your story to tell, if you would?”

    “I will not spare the boy any crippling detail.”

    The headmaster sighed, covering his face with two aged hands in a rare show of weakness before pressing them back down to the edge of his desk and nodding.

    “Albus, it is late,” Remus said softly. “Harry needs to get to bed. This meeting should have been called in the morning.”

    "Perhaps you are right," the Headmaster conceded. "A good night's rest would do Harry right... with even this small portion of the whole."

    Harry didn't like the sound of that. Having Snape as his  _true mate_ was a small part compared to  _what_?

    “I’m not going anywhere,” Sirius growled.

    “Sirius,” the headmaster said empathetically. “I will keep you informed of any important developments. At the end of Harry’s first heat he will take the suppressants, and then will continue to take them for the remainder of his time here at Hogwarts. He will be safe here under the care of myself, Professor McGonagall, and _yes,_ his mate.”

    “You can’t imagine I would let Harry stay at Hogwarts with _him_.”

    Harry gasped, stomach clenching in horror as the words registered. He couldn’t do that, could he? Remove him from the school, from his friends?

    “Don’t be a fool, Black. Do you really want to jeopardize your relationship with your godson so early on into your acquaintance?” Snape spat. His hand stealthily crept up the back of Harry’s neck to grip him there. Not strong enough to paralyze him, but a reminder that the alpha had control. Harry tried to ignore the way goosebumps spread over his scalp from the point of contact.

    Sirius caught Harry’s distrustful expression beyond Snape’s scowl and deflated.

    “Might I put a helpful reminder out there that during the school year the Dursleys have helpfully abdicated all parental responsibility and he is therefore a ward of the school and under _my_ guardianship?” Professor Dumbledore asked pleasantly. “As long as he wishes it, Harry will have a home here, in this school.”

    Harry’s heart swelled. “Thank you, sir,” he said, blinking away sudden tears.

    “I just want you safe, pup,” Sirius whispered.

    “Snape — I mean, Professor Snape — has saved my life several times already,” Harry said earnestly. “I doubt he’s planning on undoing all his hard work in order to _ruin_ it now.”

    A soft snort behind him, then the hand let him go. Harry tried not to think about how cold the nape of his neck was afterwards.

    “I have no intention of making advances on… Mister Potter,” he agreed, a far more respectful method of address than he ever had used before. “I am not into children.”

    “He won’t be a child forever,” said Remus calmly. Harry had almost forgotten he was there.

    “No. But I also have no intention on breaking the Charter nor the Laws. I am not a stupid man; I am not squandering perhaps the one chance I have at --” His hands gripped the armrest afresh, arm muscles hardening against Harry's as he cut himself off from finishing his sentence.

    “Oh, Severus.” Harry was surprised to see a thin shine of tears in the Headmaster’s eyes. Batty. Absolutely bonkers.

    “So, I will meet with Professor Snape to discuss… the ‘other factors?’” Harry questioned.

    “Remedial Potions, should be a fine cover,” Snape said, grinning somewhat maliciously.

    “I’d prefer to just be given detention,” Harry murmured. He’d meant to sound angry, even biting, but it came out softly instead. Stupid submissive hormones.

    But then, when Snape looked back at him, devoid of anger or snark and said, “Detention, then,” he thought it might be okay that he’d let Snape get away with baiting him, just this once.

    “Well, with your history I’m sure it won’t be too hard to come up with reasons for that. One more thing, Harry, since the Tournament is coming, and well, you _do_ seem to have quite a few enemies, especially after last year, I thought it best if you had some sort of protection to keep you safe around our various visitors.”

    “Uh, I don’t want a bodyguard or anything. I mean, Crabbe and Goyle following Malfoy around are bad enough…”

    “A good guess, but actually I was thinking a little simpler. You may not have seen your fellow classmates with one of these,” he said, drawing a strappy leather handful out of his desk. “Most won't _need_ them, you see, but I thought wearing a shield over your mating gland would be a wise decision, in these uncertain times.”

    Harry left the little sanctuary of safety he’d molded into against Snape’s arm to retrieve the item. It seemed to be a curved leather guard, of sorts, but the long leather thongs hanging from it confused him. “I… don’t know how to wear it.”

    Snape took over. “This curved edge sits along the base of your neck. The two long edges curve over your shoulder and collarbone. These two straps are longer, they first tie together under your armpit, like so, and then the ends wrap around your chest to secure the third strap, stabilizing it in place.”

    The professor eyed it critically, making sure it would adequately provide protection, before untying it and handing it back to him. “It goes on under your robes, right against your skin, and you’ll probably want to hide it so that an attacker won't know to remove it from you first. If it irritates your skin you can use a Cushioning charm, but a Softening charm will render it useless.”

    “Will leather hold up against a Blasting or Cutting curse?” Harry asked skeptically.

    “There’s a metal plate inside,” Dumbledore said, eyes twinkling as he regarded their interaction. “Metal is notoriously difficult to charm, and it’s pewter besides, a very resistant metal.”

    Harry fingered the thin leather straps, wondering what prevented a dedicated alpha from just ripping it off his body, but kept his mouth shut.

    “An interesting evening, gentlemen,” McGonagall spoke up then. “But Mister Potter is out well past tonight's curfew. Harry will have his detention to speak on the rest, but for now, I will escort him to his tower.”

    “Just one more thing before you go, Harry.” Dumbledore said seriously. “It is crucial — absolutely _critical —_ that you not mention your new standing with Professor Snape to _anyone_ outside these office walls. Any secrets, or surprises you were gifted with tonight _must_ be kept absolutely private. Do you understand?”

    “No,” he said truthfully, unable to lie with that calming scent still wrapped around him. “Will I understand better after the detentions with Professor Snape?”

    “Yes,” the man spoke behind him.

    “I _will_ keep it private, though,” Harry said, frowning. “You didn’t ask _that_. Can I at least tell Ron and Hermione?”

    “Would you trust Ron and Hermione with Professor Snape’s life?”

    Harry opened his mouth, his loyalty to his friends prompting him to answer in the affirmative, but then he remembered Ron’s still lively ire towards the potions professor. “Hermione, yes. Ron, no,” he said finally, feeling sad at the revelation.

    “Would you trust Hermione to keep these huge secrets from Ron, potentially forever?”

    Dumbledore was really hitting him with the hard stuff that night. “... No.” Harry felt a bitter loneliness squeeze his chest. Was there really no one he could trust with this?

    “If you cannot keep it to yourself, I can give you an alpha order,” Snape said. Despite his colorful history of implying Harry was a failure at everything he tried, somehow the offer emerged sounding like just that: a genuine offer.

    “Like hell you’ll be giving _my_ —”

    “Sirius,” Harry said, then clasped a hand to his throat, surprised at how _growly_ his godfather's name had come out. He cleared his throat delicately, then regarded Snape. “Will it help prevent me from letting it slip accidentally?”

    “It will prevent you from talking in your sleep, saying something in the heat of the moment, or letting incriminating details slip out while otherwise distracted, but it will not stop truth potions or Compulsion spells.”

    “Do it, then,” Harry said determinedly. “If it is as Professor Dumbledore says, if it means your life, then do it. I will let it through.”

    In his peripheral view he saw Dumbledore stroke his beard again in intrigue.

 _“Harry Potter, do not let anyone know my secrets._ ” Harry shuddered, natural instinct battling his developed habit of throwing off alpha orders for a moment, then Snape’s hand came around his neck and gripped between skull and spine tightly.

    “Thanks,” he mumbled, collapsing against the man as his strength abruptly left him, mentally and physically. “Too used to fighting. Should be good now; I think it took.”

    “You are surprising me.”

    “Well, perhaps during detention I should tell you a few of my secrets, as well,” Harry said after the man released him. He shook out his school robes unnecessarily, and avoided looking directly at Snape after the surprisingly intimate interaction.

    He tucked his new shield into his pocket and looked to Sirius, who was positively _green._

    “It’s good to see you again, Padfoot,” Harry said softly. “I missed you, since visiting the Weasleys.”

    “I missed you too, Prongslet,” he said on a sigh. “You were gone just two weeks, and in that time you escaped a Death Eater attack and now your under the… the _thrall_ of, of…” Remus’s hand came down on Sirius’s shoulder.

    “It’s good to see you, Harry,” he said warmly. “I’ll take care of him. You have a good night, and take care of yourself this year.”

    “Looks like this year someone else gets to take the heat, with the tournament happening,” Harry said smiling. “I just have to survive Malfoy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love to send out a warm welcome to those who are joining us here after the end of Breathe! :D I fully expect this story will not be as er... *sculpted* as that one, with a clear plot stretching from chapter one to the final posting. Still, I have had lots of fun writing so far, and I hope you enjoy how these two interact as they figure out their new status, and how to deal with each other.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a scuffle in the halls, Snape figuratively drags Harry off to his first 'detention.'

# Chapter Three

* * *

* * *

****Tuesday after Divination, Malfoy initiated their first skirmish of the school year. Emerging from the dungeon entrance, he taunted Ron about his father, his mother, his family — all of it — and then when Harry walked away a hex emerged from the Slytherin’s wand with a loud ‘BANG’ and seared the skin surrounding his hidden shield as it passed by. Then, there was another ‘BANG’ as Harry ducked, scrambling desperately for his wand, but he was prevented from engaging the blond as Moody hobbled onto the scene, turned Malfoy into a ferret, of all things, and flung him up in the air, letting him smack onto the floor and then tossing him back up again and again.

    On a normal day, a usual day, Harry might have felt sorry for a student being manhandled, _abused_ , completely out of their control like that. But Malfoy’s curse had come _that close_ to hitting his shield, without which the spell would have undoubtedly destroyed his mating gland, leaving him lonely and empty forever — according to Hermione's many concerned warnings — and just then watching the arrogant alpha get his just desserts was viscerally satisfying in a way that had him baring his teeth at the flying creature and stifling the urge to growl.

    McGonagall arrived onto the scene next. From the top of the stairs staring d]own at the mall in dismay, she put a stop to the show quickly, dropping an armload of books in horror and then watching Moody take Malfoy away to confront the Slytherin’s head of house with a deeply uncomfortable look on her face. At the mercy of an instinct he didn't fully understand, Harry sidled up to McGonagall in guise of helping her pick up her books.

    “Malfoy tried to hex me from behind,” Harry said quietly so the other students still mingling couldn’t hear. “I don’t have Potions till Wednesday, but... _he_ has to know. Today. It came close to hitting me right on my shield.”

    “Goodness, Potter... are you alright?”

    “It didn’t hit. Moody got there in time. But it was close. He has to know. Can you tell him? I _need_ him to know.”

    McGonagall’s eyes softened at his obvious difficulty, then she spoke loudly enough for the surrounding students to overhear. “Five points to Gryffindor; thank you for your assistance Mr. Potter. Now, I’m going to follow up with our erstwhile student... cursing in the halls! I never!” Harry smiled gratefully at her as she scurried on her way to the dungeons.

    They hadn't even had that first tell-all ‘detention’ yet, but Harry was practically choking in his instinct to run to his — his _mate_. He wanted to rail against the need, wanted to care more than he _didn't_... but his world had shifted the moment he'd sniffed Snape's hand. Home had shifted. Safety had shifted. He knew intrinsically... everything to do with the older man had to do with him now, too. And everything to do with Harry, had to do with Snape as well. Like the Professor had said... this was _his_ one shot, too. He felt the assurance of it, though he could not explain it any better than to use his mate's own words from that night.

    Harry returned to Ron and Hermione and they all went straight to dinner, speaking quietly about what had just occurred, trying to make sense of it all. As Harry choosingly piled his plate full of food, Malfoy slunk in, looking sulky and out of sorts as he sat down at his table. Moody followed shortly with that same grimace as always across his face, and five minutes later McGonagall entered, sending a nod to Harry as she did.

    Then, another two minutes later Snape stormed in, slamming the door with a loud crash that garnered the entire Hall's attention and then strode with long, powerful steps over to the Gryffindor table.

    “ _Potter_ ,” he hissed, and Harry scrambled up from the bench, preparing for a confrontation but also focusing all his mental energy into sucking in as much of the man’s calming sent as possible at the same time. He was desperate for the relief it brought. Perhaps there was an addictive quality to alpha pheromones — though... Fred, George, or Sirius’s scents had never caused him to feel this way. Snape's expression was fire and brimstone, his gaze full of hatred, but his eyes swept along Harry’s face and neck — the recently-endangered-gland side — telling Harry the Professor’s thoughts were running as instinctively as his own.

    “Detention,” Snape hissed, looming over him just a touch closer than appropriate, but Harry knew why as the other man’s nostrils were sucking in _his_ scent as deeply as his own were.

    “What for?” he complained, going for his best ‘martyred Gryffindor’ expression. It was strange to struggle with such an action, to secretly be thrilled to be carted away to the man's dungeon territory. His emotions were going haywire after the close call, it seemed, or he was losing his mind.

    “Instigating a fight in the halls,” the man sneered, giving a lazy glance across the table and lingering extra long on Ron. “Did you think it wouldn’t get back to me? My student, being abused in _my_ school, and I wouldn’t find out whose fault it is? Dungeons, _now.”_

    “But —” Harry cut himself off. The Professor was already striding away. With a longing glance at the dinner he didn’t get to finish and the desserts he wouldn’t get to taste that night, he picked up his bag and followed the man out. It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to going without food for an evening.

    “What a git,” scathed Ron behind him. Harry wanted to correct him, but the alpha order tightened his throat and he kept walking.

 

* * *

 

    “Here, Potter, your dinner.”

    Harry stopped abruptly, at the sight of a plate, utensils and goblet sitting at his usual desk. “What —”

    “I am an alpha,” ground out Snape. “It is my nature to provide.” The words seemed to drag out of him as if it were painful to speak of it.

    Harry eyed the steak and kidney pie curiously. “This wasn’t served at the table tonight.”

    “Interesting,” said Snape in a tone that implied he thought it anything but.

    “It’s my favorite. The others think it’s gross so I never told anyone.”

    “Good for you.”

    “How did you know?”

    Snape sighed, evidently giving up on appearing crusty and removed as his whole body seemed to deflate out of it’s rigid stature. He shot a few spells around the place, one at the door

which made an odd, squelching noise, a few at the walls plus another around the both of them that left an odd buzzing in Harry’s ears for a few seconds after it took effect.

    “There,” he said when done, frowning at the school bag still clenched tightly in Harry’s fist. His eye roved to Harry’s shoulder. “Are you well, Potter?”

    “Physically,” he said, shrugging. “I’ve still got something twisting in my stomach from the close call, though.”

    “I... understand the sentiment.”

    Harry frowned. “You do? Wouldn’t you — wouldn’t you be free of me, if the hex had landed?”

    Snape’s hands fisted at his sides, and his eyes blazed with unfabricated anger. “ _No,_ Potter, I _wouldn’t_ be free, if my _true mate_ was stolen away from me, unable to form an attachment to me as _I_ am to them.” His lips thinned, white with the pressure holding them together.

    “But... you hate me,” Harry said softly.

    “I tried,” the man said with a mocking slash of his mouth. “I tried and I tried. But... no. I don’t.” Harry felt his eyes welling up, but _why_ did they? He then asked the question that seemed connected to the phenomenon: “Will you stop trying now?”

    “Eat your food. We will talk once I am assured your appetite is still well.”

    Harry obeyed, tucking into the pie and the potatoes and sprouts beside it. The sprouts were _definitely_ not his favorite, but he assumed the man was trying to get something green and healthy into him. He swallowed great glugs of his pumpkin juice as well, knowing the man must have specifically requested it.

    Some amount of tension seemed to have left the Professor as he swallowed the last of the meal, and he resolved to look up alphas in the books Remus had gotten him soon. He’d only paid attention to the parts about male omegas like himself, and didn’t know at all what Snape needed, or expected from him now... or even why it felt so important to fulfill it all for the man.

    “Thank you,” he said quietly, laying his goblet back down neatly next to plate and fork. The professor nodded.

    “I had thought to speak while we worked on the antidote to the accident the second years will no doubt have on Friday,” Snape said slowly, “but... if we are to be overly _sentimental_...”

    With a wave of his wand, the charms on the room broke in unison, giving Harry the feeling his ears were popping. He strode to the entrance of the classroom, opening the door and holding an impatient hand out.

    “Well, Potter?”

    Harry, disappointed, grabbed his backpack and scuffed his way to the door. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” he grumbled. “I really did want to talk.”

    “We _are,_ Potter. Keep up. The others should be at dinner still, but you should look properly chagrined in the halls anyway...”

    Instead of dismissing Harry back to his tower, Professor Snape took hold of his elbow and escorted him further into the dungeons, to his office.

    Once the door had closed behind them — really, there were almost twice as many nasty jars now than there were two years ago — and Snape had used the same combination of spells to secure the door and whatever he did to the walls, Snape turned to him, face unreadable.

    “Something you do not know about me, Potter, is that I am an accomplished Occlumens. Do you know what that is?”

    “No, sir,” Harry answered, thoroughly intimidated by the dim room and the intimacy of being alone with the man who was supposed to be his mate.

    “It means I can protect my mind from being _intruded_ upon by outside sources. Do you understand?”

    Harry felt a bit sick. “You mean... there are people who can read minds?”

    Snape closed his eyes and sucked in a breath as if praying for patience. “One does not _read minds_ as if they were as mundane as a _book_ , boy —” Harry flinched at the tone and name, with which he had a loaded history. “A mind is a unique and many-layered thing... completely unique to the individual, and I have undertaken the years of study necessary to protect it. This is what I am trying to convey. _Do you understand_?”

    “Yes.”

    Snape scowled. “I guess... during these detentions, I shan’t take you to task for failing to show me proper respect.”

    “Er... sir?”

    He shook his head. “Pay it no mind, Potter. Do you know what this is?” He gestured to a wide, roughly hewn bowl in his desk, engraved with runes so the way round and currently devoid of contents.

    “Other than a stone bowl? No.”

    Harry could _see_ the man set aside the scathing retort he wanted to give. “It is called a Pensieve. If a certain memory becomes too burdensome to bear, I can extract if straight from my head, and place it here. Once out, however, it becomes vulnerable... anyone can stumble upon a Pensieve and view the contents. _Anyone_.”

    Harry chewed his lip. “And... are you, who have worked to protect your mind — going to show a memory to me?”

    Snape’s lips quirked sideways in a move that wasn’t quite a smirk, but wasn’t exactly a smile either. Still, it was a non-aggressive kind of expression that Harry had never seen on the man’s face before, and he gaped in response to the sight.

    “Interesting,” Snape said finally. This time he actually sounded like he meant it.

    “What?”

    “Causing you... pleasant surprise is far more satisfying than rousing your anger. I shall remember. Now, the first memory I will share with you is... something of a gift. It is a dear memory, and one you will probably enjoy seeing. Are you ready?”

    “Erm... yes, what do I need to do?” But the Professor was already holding the tip of his wand to his temple, a gesture that caused Harry a sudden rush of fear.

    “What —” As the Professor pulled the wand away, a glowing, silvery thread trailed behind it, growing longer the farther he pulled, until finally it separated entirely until it dangled, swinging, below the wand. This he dropped into the bowl, and it expanded to fill the shallow bottom in a swirling, silvery layer that seemed neither air nor liquid.

    “Let me check it — I was distracted by your anxiety at the end, don’t want anything untoward sneaking in...” He stirred the memory, then watched as images flashed across the surface, too quick for Harry to follow.

    Harry muttered, quietly so as to not disturb whatever Snape was doing, “I must still be on edge, when you held your wand to your _head_..”

    “Still? Come here.”

    Harry hesitated, then shuffled forward, uncertain. Snape smoothed his hand across the back of his neck, then pinched, and like before Harry pitched forward, falling into the other man in involuntary surrender. Just like other mated alphas he'd seen, Snape directed Harry's head to his neck, and likewise the Gryffindor felt the man’s large nose nuzzle into his own.

    The scent there was so strong he felt like it should _sting_ his nose the way any other kind of smell would have at that intensity. Instead, the air around Snape's neck flowed in and through him like it was the first breath he'd ever taken, like every breath he'd taken so far had been through clogged sinuses. If there had been any physical tension left in him — which thanks to Snape's grip, there was not — it would have melted away immediately. As it was, the leftover mental strain drifted further away with every breath... and not only the terror that he'd be alone forever that Malfoy had caused but his fears about Voldemort and Moody and what secrets Snape's Pensieve would hold that night all dribbled down, down until all Harry could be was a indolent being, drunk on his mate’s scent, held securely by his hand.

    “Better?” Snape asked after a moment, his typically-smooth voice coming out rougher, and with a slightly less cultured twang than Harry had ever heard from the man previously.

    “Yep,” he replied lazily, so at peace that he was not able to prevent the now-expected protest from leaking out of his mouth when the man set him back and away. Blushing slightly, he shook out his limbs when his neck was finally released, reassuring himself they were all under his control again. “That’s... like what I imagine being on drugs must be like.”

    Instead of chiding him for mentioning illicit substances, Snape nodded. “It has the same effect on the brain, however it is far less addicting than Calming Draughts or similar.”

    Harry read between the lines. “But still _slightly_ addictive?”

    “Artificial means of calming oneself down are always addictive, at least _psychologically_ if not physiologically. If someone were to use their mate’s scent at every upset, they would find themselves unable to deal with anything that came their way. The brain’s development is arrested, it cannot learn to withstand life’s tragedies if the effect of them is never allowed to _change_ it.”

    “Should we have not done that, then?” Concerned, Harry’s hand came up to rest over his neck where the Professor had snuffled _him_ , but Snape shook his head thoughtfully.

    “There are certain aspects to being a pair that will prevent us from fully resting until we are certain the other is safe, still available to us. It is good that there was time in between — but it is likely we would have remained on edge until we had scented each other as we just did.”

    “When I take the suppressants...”

    “The calming effect will be muted,” Snape confirmed. “Come, now, we have a limited amount of time and there is much to discuss. Dip the tip of your wand into the memory.”

    Harry scurried to obey, catching a short glimpse of a children’s playground and two girls playing before a sensation of falling head-first took him over. He screamed, falling through open air, all of a sudden realizing that it had been a trap, that Snape _was_ still a Death Eater and he must be delivering him now to whatever poor being Voldemort had currently possessed, when his feet lightly landed on the dirt ground.

    He panted, spinning around as Snape appeared gracefully behind him, then startled again as voices reach them.

    “Lily, don’t do it!”

    Harry’s mouth fell open at the name, spinning once more to see the girls in the playground he’d spotted in the bowl in front of him. One had red hair. “Mum?”

    “They can’t hear us. This is just a memory.”

    “ _Your..._ memory?”

    Snape gestured to a nearby set of bushes, behind which a little boy with rather odd taste in ill-fitting clothes was spying on his mum and the other girl who _must_ have been his Aunt Petunia.

    “Oh my God,” Harry breathed, noticing the too-skinny build, unevenly shorn hair, and worn clothing. “You look like me.”

    “What?” Snape reared back as if struck. “Look at me, Potter, a pitiful figure. In fact, don’t look at me at all, I brought you here so you could see your mother, instead.”

    But Harry’s heart was pounding in his chest, his fingertips prickling as he kneeled next to the boy, noticing now that he was close the dark smudges under his eyes, so hungry as they stared at his joyful mother, the faint bruise on his temple. “Can I show you?” he asked breathlessly. “I said I would share my secrets too. Will you teach me how to put my memories in the Pensieve?”

“ _Fine_ , Potter, _watch_.”

    “It’s not hurting you,” Lily told her protesting sister, holding up a flower which folded in on itself and opened repeatedly. Petunia, however, wasn’t having any of it and snatched it away, throwing it to the ground in fear.

    “It’s not right.... — How do you do it?”

    “Is she... _jealous_?” Harry whispered to his adult companion as little Snape rose out from behind the bushes, his slight figure activated with excitement.

    “Isn’t it obvious?” the boy said, scaring the daylights out of Petunia who actually turned and ran for cover.

    “What’s obvious?” his mum said, standing firm, though clearly frightened herself. Harry was astounded to see little Snape was _blushing,_ though his older counterpart stared at the scene with almost... sadness.

    “I know what you are.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “You’re... you’re a witch,” the little boy said softly.

    Harry greedily turned to his mother, longing to see the expression on her face when she had been told as Harry had, that she was _magic,_ but...

    “ _That’s_ not a very nice thing to say to somebody!”

    Snottily, she turned her head up and marched away.

    “No, mum,” Harry whispered, watching as little Snape pleaded with her to understand that she was a witch and he was a wizard, as Petunia shrieked at both of them and drug his mother away by her arm.

    Then, with a whoosh, Harry was back in Snape’s office once more, backing away from the bowl and taking a clumsy seat in one of Snape’s guest chairs.

    “You knew my mum.”

    “We were friends. It was... difficult, but she was my only friend, until Hogwarts when I was sorted to Slytherin.”

    Harry stared up at him, speechless for just a moment, before, “My mom was your... Ron.”

    “No,” Snape disagreed. “Nothing as easy as that. She was sorted into Gryffindor with your father and his friends, and quickly fell under their spell. Your father was like... my Draco Malfoy. From the moment he found out what house I hoped to be in on the train... he decided I was persona non grata. When I made my own friends within my house... Lily decided she could not trust me any longer. I did not realize it then... the effect of becoming a Death Eater.”

    Harry’s mouth flopped. “My father was _no Draco Malfoy_!” he said angrily, ignoring the rest of what he’d just heard. Snape glared back, then put his wand to his temple again.

    “Watch it,” he hissed after the next memory was deposited, shoving Harry’s wand down into the now-fuller bowl. He did not land in the memory beside Harry that time.

    “This is it! We’re off to Hogwarts!” little Snape exclaimed. Lily, who had obviously been crying, wiped her face clear and nodded back at him. He continued to say, “You’d better be in Slytherin.”

    “Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I’d leave, wouldn’t you?” Harry gasped. There, in the _same compartment as Snape_ was his father, cheeks plumper than Harry’s had been at that age, with a comfortable, lazy slump against the seat that neither Harry or little Snape ever seemed to feel safe enough to do.

    “My whole family have been in Slytherin,” another boy said, and Harry realized with a start that it was _Sirius._

    “Blimey, and I thought you seemed alright!” James said, horrified.

    “Maybe I’ll break the tradition. Where are you heading, if you’ve got the choice?”

    “Gryffindor, where dwell the brave at heart! Like my dad.”

    Harry murmured, “My grandfather...” as little Snape made a disparaging noise.

    “Got a problem with that?” his father demanded of the boy.

    “No, if you’d rather be brawny than brainy —”

    Sirius interrupted. “Where’re you hoping to go, seeing as you’re neither?”

    As his father lost himself to uncontrollable laughter, Lily tugged Snape out of the compartment, glaring at the two as she went.

    “See ya, Snivellus!” his father saluted as the door closed behind them.

    A hand on Harry’s shoulder pulled him gently from the memory. Older Snape’s face was impassive as Harry processed what he’d seen.

    “Parts of that were... almost word for word how Malfoy had been with me,” he said finally.

    “Lily was Sorted into Gryffindor, and the only kind person other than her to me was a Prefect, Lucius Malfoy,” Snape said then, “— at _first_. He arranged more companions to me, possibly to get me off his back — possibly to further _culture_ me. Your father’s and my enmity grew over the years and all the while graduated Death Eaters and the Dark Lord eagerly recruited my classmates and I, right from under the Headmaster’s nose. Eventually, your father pulled a — a _stunt_ that pushed me too far, and I shouted at your mother, pushed her away, and that was the end of our friendship. She never forgave me. After graduation...”

    Snape sucked in a breath then, rallied, and then continued. “After graduation your mother and father joined a secret group, the opposite of the Death Eaters. The Order of the Phoenix. They married, and clashed with us regularly. Three times, they came upon the Dark Lord, and three times they escaped. Then, one summer, while I followed the Headmaster through Hogsmeade, I listened in on a very peculiar job interview.”

    He pulled another memory from his head, and plopped it down into the basin.

    “I want you to understand something. You can turn around and walk out of here, now. We can return to being enemies; you can return to the Headmaster’s timetable for your life. There are secrets I hold, secrets in this Pensieve right now, that Professor Dumbledore was hoping not to reveal for _years_ yet — but if I am to guard you as not only a teacher, but as your mate, you need to understand my complete role in this war. I will not settle for ignorance and doubt. It is your decision.”

    Harry’s eyes drifted to the Pensieve. Whatever was in there must be really bad, if Snape was offering to sever all ties so that he didn’t have to deal with it until Dumbledore was ready to show it to him. “You are letting me choose... the secrets in the memory and you, or... normality?”

    “That is the case, yes.”

    “I choose... uhm. I choose you. And... er, the secrets.” Harry flushed, and could not meet the Professor’s eyes. It wasn’t _romance_ that bound him to Snape, it was the promise of _connection_ — and instinct and an urge for answers. It was the desire for the thing that had long eluded him, the thing he sobbed for in the dark itchy nights in his cupboard as a child. The desire for one person to be his, and his alone, sheltering him and providing even as the rest of the world — the Dursleys — could be seething in their anger and hatred... Funny how the man who so often ‘seethed’ himself would turn out to be that person.

    “Okay, Potter. What I am going to show you... I cannot show you my worst memories. I _cannot_. But this one, this memory, it is my biggest regret. There are things I will have to tell you, after this memory, that will change your view of the war, and me, forever. After this, if you still wish for me to know you... I will teach you how to place your own memories in the Pensieve.”

    Harry wanted to walk out, then. Wanted to take Snape up on his offer to leave, and be blissfully _stupid_ forever. But he knew the clock was already ticking, Voldemort was potentially planning on coming after him with that dirty-blond headed fellow... and what’s more with Durmstrang’s students coming, students who already knew Dark magic...

    “Let’s go,” he said firmly. He followed Snape’s lead, placing his wand into the swirling soup of thought. This time the fall was dark. Lightning flashed, highlighting a pouring rain as he fell, landing in the sodden streets of Hogsmeade without making a splash.

    “There,” Snape said as he landed, pointing out a dark silver-haired figure who was holding up his wand to keep the rain off him, and then to another figure, marching slowly in the shadow of the buildings, obviously sneaking behind the first man. “The Headmaster is going to the Hog’s Head Inn to interview a potential Divination teacher, whom you now know as Professor Trelawney.”

    Harry stayed silent, following along behind the sneaking Snape, following him into the Inn and up the stairs where he perched by the door, head cocked intently. He must've used a Drying Charm because no water dripped from his robes to the floor.

    “I was young, only nineteen, at that time, and near the bottom of the Dark Lord’s esteem. Still, the Slytherins I grew up with fought beside me for his favor and as I performed well, I was welcomed... I’d found a place for myself, sheltered from realizing how unsavory that place was, until _this_ night.”

    Harry gazed upon teenage Snape, a little shocked at the transformation from the last memory. His clothes were worn no longer, his hair still lank but cut straight, the lines and strain that marked his adult companion were nowhere to be seen, in fact his skin was smooth and almost _glowing_ , due to how pale it was. He was wearing the high-collared, severe type of robes he still preferred as a Professor, though on his young frame they just served to make him seem _strong,_ almost militant.

    “Stop ogling, Potter, my worst moment is at hand.”

    Harry blushed. He _had_ been staring rather intently. He sidled up close to the door like young Snape had.

    “I’m _very_ sorry, Miss Trelawney, but I do not think that for this position you are the exact person we are looking f—”

    “THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES... BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES...”

    “ _What are you doing_?” a rough hand grabbed young Snape by the arm and hauled him back downstairs. The strange, guttural voice of Trelawney faded away, and Harry could no longer hear what she had to say.

    “Come,” Snape said, following the innkeeper as he tossed younger Snape out into the rain. “The worst part is here.”

    Young Snape gaped, awestruck at the closed door of the inn, then with a victorious expression spun on his heel. The world spun dizzyingly around them for a moment while older Snape and he stood still, then the memory stabilized on the driveway of a gigantic, opulent house surrounded by gardens.

    “Malfoy Manor,” Snape said, sneering around, as they followed his younger counterpart who practically sprinted away from them. “I was impressed with it at the time, foolish boy that I was...”

    They followed the memory through the front doors and down the hall through a set of double doors which concealed a large drawing room, complete with a long table surrounded by chairs and one larger throne-like seat at the very end. In that seat sat a pale-faced slit-nosed man, features so blurred they were barely reminiscent as being human.

    “Voldemort,” Harry guessed on a whisper.

    Snape flinched immediately. “Don’t speak that name to me!” he hissed.

    “I will,” he argued distractedly, and walked away as young Snape practically sprinted towards the monstrous thing, and prostrated himself, trembling before him.

    “What news do you have for me, young Severus?” Voldemort asked idly. “You seem quite... enthusiastic.”

    Harry watched in horror as his prideful Professor cowered on the carpet. “I can’t believe you _served_ him like this.”

    “A prophecy, my Lord!” Snape said, raising his head to grin madly at his master — for surely with that kind of behavior Snape was little more than a slave to the beast.

    Voldemort’s bare brow rose in intrigue.

    “Dumbledore was interviewing a candidate for the open Divination position tonight and as he began to turn her down she spoke an _actual_ prophecy! ‘ _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies_.’ My lord, get rid of the child and you will have no one to oppose you!”

    Harry glared at his Professor, but the man was staring, with an expression so openly devastated, at his younger self. Then, he spoke, “If I could go back, undo only one thing...”

    “The Potters,” Voldemort said softly, tapping his chin in thought. “It must be.”

    “What — no,” young Snape stuttered.

    “My lord,” a beautiful, black haired woman said, rising from her seat near him at the table. Everything about her appearance was refined, smoothed, attractively designed. “My _lord_ , let me do it... let me kill them for you...”

    “Wait — please, my lord... the Potters...”

    “They have escaped my justice three times, have they not, Severus? And my faithful says that their brat is due in July — it is just as the prophecy states.”

    “But, my lord, Lily... the — the mother...”

    “You have brought me priceless news, Severus, but you try my patience.”

    “Th-the mother, Lily, I’ve known her since I was a boy. Please... spare her life...”

    Voldemort eyed him like a house cleaner might examine a particularly colorful bug before squashing it. “This is the boon you ask of me, Severus? Not more power... not influence within my ranks... not even the choice of our omega _guests_ to warm your bed... you ask for the life of one _traitorous girl_?”

    Face transformed in fear and hope, young Snape nodded.

    Voldemort’s lip curled, but he nodded. “Such weakness I did not realize you possessed, boy. You know by now I do not like to make uncertain promises, but I shall keep your —” another lip curl, “ _request_ in mind, when I seek out the infant. Give me your arm.”

    Snape bared his arm where a black tattoo dominated his milky white forearm. Voldemort grabbed hold of the proffered limb and then pressed his wand firmly into the mark. Snape hissed and ducked his head, while the Dark Lord just peered down at his pain with mild interest.

    “Perhaps you should... take a rest Severus, while we plan the attack. You have served me well.” He then turned to the few gathered at the table as scattered figures who must have been on site already began hurrying in through the door.

    “Tonight, we plot the beginning of Dumbledore's Order and the Ministry's end! Tonight we plot my way to victory!”

    Cheers and shouts rose as the young Death Eater, haunted by what he'd just done, ran from the room. The dungeon reformed around them, and Harry slowly removed his wand from the memory, and then turned the point of it towards Snape.

    “You.”

    The Professor stood braced, a trace of the pain still gracing his face as he stared right back.

    “I thought I had enough reasons to regret that night. But here, I find myself with another one. How unexpected.”

    “YOU’RE THE _REASON_ MY PARENTS ARE DEAD!” Around the room glass jars broke as his rage manifested physically. Their pungent smell wiped out Snape's, and his rage grew as its calming power was nullified.

    “I am one of the reasons, yes. Voldemort then became relentless in his pursuit of her... of you. I went to Dumbledore, after your birth, and begged him to get her safe... to get your family safe. In return, I promised to serve _him_ instead of the Dark Lord, and reported his every move to the Headmaster —”

    “YOU KILLED MY MOTHER! MY FATHER! YOU HATED HIM, YOU _SAID_ YOU DID!”

    “I did hate your father. I do not deny that. But I _loved_ your mother. Wormtail, it seems, did not have that same driving force. He was another involved in her death, and then, of course, the Dark Lord as well. The power in your blood comes from him offering to spare her, and her refusing. If not for that, he _would_ have successfully killed you.”

    “Is that supposed to make what you did _better?”_

    “No. It just is.”

    Harry glared at him, breaths coming out in aching pants, so filled with hate and rage for the man in front of him he thought it might actually have become a solid mass inside of him. “The prophecy. He thought it was me. Is it?”

    “Yes. The Headmaster has given me his memory of the event, of the full Prophecy, to show you.” “Put it in.”

    “I have to remove my own first or they might corrupt each other.”

    “I’m _waiting_.”

    Without taking him to task for his appalling lack of manners, Professor Snape did as he'd demanded, dipping his wand in, and then flicking the memory so that the end connected with his temple, and then it was sucked in until his wand tip touched his skin, clean once more. He repeated the action two more times, then removed a glass vial from his robes, pouring it into the empty bowl, then prodding it a bit until the form of Trelawney rose up, shining, to speak directly to them.

    “THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES... BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM... BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES... AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOW... AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HANDS OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES...THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES...”

    Harry stumbled again to the seat he had collapsed in last time.

    “How do you know it’s me?” he asked, pleading, never having felt a responsibility this huge, this crushing before in his life. “How come it can’t be another child born in July? A girl, even?”

    “You and Neville Longbottom were the only ones whose parents defied the Dark Lord three times and lived, and had a child due at the end of July.”

    “Then it could be him! It doesn’t _have_ to be me!”

    “He _chose_ you, Potter. That scar. _He_ decided you were his equal. The Dark Lord did not make a habit of killing all of his many enemies by hand, he was an emperor, a general, not a foot soldier. But he came to your house to seek you out and chose you to be the one who had the power to defeat him.”

    “I’m just a boy. I mess up every single potion I make, I can’t be the one.”

“The Headmaster seems to think you are. And... I do not believe your _potion making_ skills will be the ones to lead to his eventual downfall. You are —” and here he sniffed, “— passable in Defence.”

    Harry grappled with the maelstrom of hate and fear and  _shock_ permeating his every breath. The contrast between the knowledge of what Snape had done and the calm form in front of him was messing with him; he couldn't think straight, somehow wanting to bridge the divide between what he'd done and who he was.

    “How long did you spy for Dumbledore?” he asked then, digging his fingertips into his scalp, trying to stay lucid through the turmoil.

    “A little under two years before his fall... and then for the last twelve-odd years I have done all that he has asked of me.”

    “Including keeping me alive.”

    “Yes, though — I would have done it to honor Lily, as well. I did not want you to know, _ever_ , but as you are now —”

    “You loved her.”

    Snape didn't blink at the interruption. “Yes.”

    Harry removed his hands from his head and looked down at them: his fingers and the nails upon them. They were blunt, flat, and his cuticles were ragged around them. They were boy hands. He did not have the pretty, rounded nails of a girl. Of a certain beautiful, red-haired girl. Snape noticed his attention.

    “It is interesting. The same hormone responsible for feeling a love connection is the same as the one responsible for hate, did you know that? I loved your mother _exactly_ as much as I hated your father. That love has sustained, all these years, just as my hate for him has. And here _you_ are, exactly half of each of them.”

    “What are you trying to say?”

    “That perhaps the reason I loved your mother and hated your father was because _they_ were half of you, as well.”

    “Are you saying that — that you _love me?_ ” the disgust could not be hidden in his voice. This was the man who sold his parents to the closest thing Earth had to the _devil_.

    “No. But Magic has decreed that I am supposed to. One day. More than anyone else, more than anything else.”

    “So what will you do if Voldemort gets stronger?”

    Snape flinched at the name, and anger suffused his face, but his voice held steady. “I will do whatever Dumbledore asks of me. Even if it means I have to go crawling on my knees before the man who killed my only true friend, to serve him information for the Dark Lord’s downfall. Your first year, your second year... I have already prepared myself to do so both times.”

    Harry suddenly understood how he could do that so very well. “Occlumency.”

    “Yes.”

    “How do I put a memory in the Pensieve?”

    Snape frowned, cautious. “You... still wish me to know you?”

    Harry fisted his imperfect hands. “I wish to _punish_ you. You are _afraid_ to show me your worst memories, your weakest moments, but I don’t have that flaw, _Severus. How do I put them in_?” Snape flicked Dumbledore’s memory into the vial, capped it, and slid it back into his pocket before approaching Harry.

    “Here,” he said mildly, holding his wand up to Harry’s temple. “Recall what you want to show me. Relive it, in your mind. Close your eyes, or it might not work with your untrained mind. Remember the smells, the sounds, the textures touching your body... call them up...”

    The Professor removed his wand slowly, and Harry felt a tickling, pulling sensation throughout his skull, as if his very brain were painlessly melting out through the spot where the thread was being pulled from.

    “Again,” Harry said, glaring still, when Snape turned back.

    “Again,” he said after that one was done.

    “Again?” Snape said, raising an eyebrow sardonically after the third was placed.

    “You have a lot of punishments to view,” Harry grit out hatefully, incensed by the trace of humor in the man's voice. Snape assisted him in removing a total of twelve memories, and after the last was gone, Harry stood taller, regarding the solemn man with a smirk.

    “I feel great,” he said confidently. “I should have done that _ages_ ago. I think our time here is done, don’t you agree? I’ll leave you to your penance.”

    Harry strode to the door, a swagger in his step he was unused to, but loving in the moment. He was loving _everything_ right then. He was king of himself, _free,_ finally!

    “Potter —”

    “I won't tell anyone what I’ve seen and heard here,” Harry interrupted without caution. “Just like _you_ wont tell _anyone_ about what’s in that Pensieve. Oh, and Professor —”

    Snape stared at him in unmasked horror.

    “You aren’t allowed to scent me to ease the result of those memories. Until I say otherwise, you are to _live_ with the discomfort that watching them brings. Do you understand?”

    “Potter, these are obviously core memories; you are not acting like your —”

    “ _Do you understand_?”

    “Yes,” the Professor ground out. His eyes drifted to the Pensieve, and Harry knew that the temptation to see what was within was too great to continue insisting that he take them back.

    “Good night,” he said in a sharp tone, and the Professor ignored him, reaching his wand into the Pensieve already.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "And here you are, exactly half of each of them." - concept is directly inspired by Twilight. Yeah, I read them... I'm not ashamed. lol!
> 
> Sorry for not posting for a week, I was on vacation and completely exhausted by the end of every day, too exhausted to edit. Hope this chapter was long and fraught enough to make up the time lost. :)


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry and Snape confront each other's unpleasant histories. Moody gives his first lesson to the fourth years.

# Chapter Four

    The next day at breakfast, Snape stared at him far too much to be considered prudent. He wasn’t even scowling properly.

    “Wath ub wiff Thnape,” Ron said through a mouth full of mash.

    “Ugh, _gross,_ Ron,” Hermione complained.

    He grinned in response, potatoes extruding from between his teeth.

    “The same thing that up with Snape every day, I suppose,” Harry said, licking his own potatoes off his spoon indulgently. He had time to savour. No one was going to take _this_ food from him. “Moody.”

    “I dunno, Harry, he _is_ staring at _you_ rather hard,” Hermione said slowly. “I thought you said you thanked him at the end of last year. Why did he chase you down for detention yesterday, and why is he looking at you like that _now_? You seemed fine when you got back last night, but did something happen?”

    “More than fine, he was bloody chipper,” Ron grumbled. “Kept wanting to talk about the bloody tournament in the middle of the night.”

    Harry dropped his spoon to his plate with a ‘thunk,’ grabbing up his bag and standing with a huff. “Whatever,” he snorted, ruffling his hair so it’s trademark messiness would stand out even more. His eyes searched out the Ravenclaw table and even though he didn’t have a thing for her anymore, he sent Cho a rakish smile as he left the table.

    “OI! Harry! Gonna say _goodbye,_ mate?”

    “Bye!” he said, laughing.

 

* * *

 

    “ _Potter_.”

    “I don’t have Potions until tomorrow, Professor.”

    “You need to take them back.”

    Harry saw the way Snape’s eyes flitted over him... his stomach, his eye, his scalp, his arm, around and around to all the places Dudley and the Dursleys had hurt him or simply failed to provide proper treatment for. Compelled to seek proof that his young mate was unbroken, whole, in front of him now.

    Harry sneered.

    “So you want me to remember being treated that way? Want me to recall being degraded as a _freak_?”

    “ _Obviously_ not, Potter. But it is important to you. Their treatment made you who you are. You need them. You took too much… you _gave me_ too much.”

    “I don’t want them.”

    “I know. But you need them. Will you come?”

    “No scenting me.”

    “I remember.”

 

* * *

 

    Potions on Wednesday went exactly as they always had, in years past. Harry tried his best, Snape remonstrated him for every imagined slight, Neville melted his cauldron, and afterwards, Snape blamed Harry for Neville’s mistake and hissed out a demand for Harry to stay behind.

    “I’ll wait for you outside,” Ron said, commiserating.

    “ _Hah_ , you _submissive_ little _bitch,_ you'll finally get what’s coming to you,” Malfoy jeered in a loud whisper.

    “Yes, thank you, Mr. Malfoy…” Snape said, lips curling in an evil smile.

    “ _Git,”_ Ron hissed back.

    “You may be laying it on a bit thick,” Harry said quietly as the door closed behind them. “Malfoy was acting as if you were planning on handing me over to Voldemort’s shade instead of just planning to insult my schoolwork.”

    “Don’t _say_ that name!”

    “I refuse. What do you need, Professor?”

    “Let me scent you.”

    “No.”

    “The longer this goes on, Potter, the more unstable my instincts will become. _Let me scent you.”_

 _“No_.”

 _“You will put us all in danger_!” Snape whisper-yelled.

    “No, _you_ won’t,” Harry disagreed. “Am I relieved? I need to get to Transfiguration.”

    “I could _make_ you let me,” Snape said, scowling.

    “No, I don’t think you can.”

    “Want to test it?” His grin was challenging, daring Harry to defy his alpha.

    “Sure, during the next detention. But not about this. I need this.”

    Snape regarded him discontentedly, eyes flickering to his arm, the one Uncle Vernon had accidentally broken and Harry’d spontaneously healed in his cupboard overnight as a very young child. “How long?”

    “I don’t know.”

    “Fine. Get out.”

    Harry did.

 

* * *

 

    The next day, the Gryffindor fourth-years had their first-ever Defence lesson with Moody. There they learned about the Unforgivable Curses… _Imperio_ , _Crucio_ , and _Avada Kedavra_. The Imperius Curse and Moody’s focus on Voldemort’s surviving victims of it gave Harry the most food for thought. He wondered, in his next ‘detention’ if Snape would be able to tell him all the names of those who had claimed to be under it during Voldemort’s first rise to power. He already knew Malfoy's dad was one of them.

    But then Moody actually _performed_ the Curses, and the shock and horror radiating through the classroom reminded Harry of the steady, creepy way Moody had followed him on the first night, and how distrustful he’d felt then. The Professor sure had _presence_ as he taught, but judging by the look on Neville’s face afterwards… he shouldn’t be distracted from the horror that he’d just delivered unto those spiders, with no hesitation at all.

    His next potions lesson on Friday Malfoy levitated the wrong ingredient into his cauldron, resulting in the contents congealing into a solid mass and a thick black smoke emerging from the top of it. “Detention, Potter… tonight, seven o’ clock sharp…”

    During the lesson Snape had refrained from going anywhere near his side of the room, and he looked particularly incensed to have had to speak to him then.

 

* * *

 

    “Hullo, professor,” he said cautiously, entering the classroom exactly on time and with the same care as one would entering a predator's lair.

    “My office, Potter,” Snape said instead of a usual greeting. He turned his head away from Harry as he passed, and Harry smiled at the back of his head, knowing he was avoiding smelling Harry's scent at all. _‘Bad man, good alpha,’_ Harry mused. He’d felt the pull to forgive the man, but wasn’t willing to surrender to his instincts yet. Still, his rage had devolved over the last week to the point where he was able to admire his honor.

    “How was your first lesson with _Moody?_ ” the Professor asked once he was safely seated behind his desk. Harry took one of the smaller guest chairs — the same one he'd collapsed into twice last time, actually, and peered around at the shelves on the wall, all of them cleaned and conspicuously missing the jars he'd blasted apart.

    “He is either a brilliant teacher or a horrible one, and I cannot figure out which yet. He showed us Unforgivable Curses.”

    “ _Showed_ you?”

    “On spiders. Three spiders, three Curses.”

    “That is not… a part of the fourth-year syllabus. _Any_ year's syllabus.”

    “He said Dumbledore wanted us to know what we're up against.”

    “Humph.” Snape's eyes strayed to his shoulder, an almost greedy light playing in his eyes before he wrenched his head away, glaring at an empty space on one of his shelves.

    “Who were the ones who claimed Voldemort used the Imperius Curse on them?”

    Snape's gaze returned to his, an eyebrow raised. “Did Moody mention that? He was at the trials, after the Dark Lord's defeat. He and Crouch, may he rest in _pieces_ , were responsible for bringing in the bulk of them after the Dark Lord's defeat.”

    Harry's eyebrows rose as well at the strange eulogy.

    “The most notable figure is one of whom you are already acquaintanced, if I am not mistaken. Lucius Malfoy.”

    “He gave Ginny Tom Riddle's diary. He was very nearly responsible for her death.”

    “That… sounds like him.”

    “ _—_ But not like someone who was acting under the Imperius, before.”

    “No.”

    “Who else?”

    “The most dangerous to the world today are Corban Yaxley and Walden McNair, due to their influence in the Ministry. Ignotius Avery is another who got off, as well as the Carrow twins — who are dangerous in the normal sense of the word — along with Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott.”

    “Crabbe, Goyle, and Nott…”

    “Yes, their fathers.”

    “So history might repeat itself.”

    “I hope not,” Snape said, a slight sigh escaping his control. “I have tried to help give them an identity… as Slytherins, a bond to each other, so that they do not feel the need to seek camaraderie elsewhere, as I did. But those four specifically have grown up in the house of their fathers… _and_ mothers, who were overlooked but still involved in the war.”

    “I don't think identity is what they need,” Harry said softly. “It's _empathy_.”

    Snape glared, but did not disagree. Feeling like the conversation had come to the end of safety, Harry decided to change the subject.

    “Do you want to try to command me?”

    Snape exchanged his harsh expression for a haughty look down his nose, then. “You are so sure you can resist. You’re an omega, and I am your mate. You won’t succeed.”

    “I've trained pretty hard to be able to.”

    Snape appeared mildly disconcerted. “When? Why?”

    “After Malfoy tried to command me not to go after the snitch last year, Fred and George's teamed up and commanded me at the same time. We drilled it until I could resist every time.”

    “But you forget, Potter, I am your _true_ mate, not your Quidditch teammates. You will find my lure _much_ stronger.”

    Harry stood, rolling his head on his neck and stretching his arms around few times. “Hit me.”

_“Say 'Gryffindor is the worst house.’”_

    His throat convulsed, but he gritted his teeth and held back the words that wanted to spend forth. And they _did_ want to come out, that's what made Snape's command so dangerous, so much more powerful than even the combined one of the Twins’. He instinctively wanted to please his mate, to obey the one who was designed to keep him safe. It made his own mind rebel against itself, adding to the command's power.

_“Say, 'Slytherin is the best house.’”_

    He swallowed, a lump in his throat making the spit gurgle as it was choked down. He didn't waste time arguing with himself, to mention all of Gryffindor's sterling qualities, he just concentrated his efforts on not saying anything at all.

_“Say, 'Professor Snape is a genius.’”_

    Harry rolled his eyes, relaxing. “Professor Snape is a genius.” 

    “Not so all-powerful now, are you Potter?”

    “I let that one through,” he said, eyeing the man suspiciously.

    “What? Why?”

    “Why not? I wanted to see how you would react.”

    “This isn't a _game,_ Potter!”

    “It's not? I thought you were just testing me for fun.”

    “This is a very good thing,” the man whispered as an aside, wheels visibly turning in his head. “Can you stop every alpha order?”

    “Yeah. I actually wasn't sure about you but at least now I —”

_“Spin around three times.”_

    Caught off guard, Harry spun a quarter turn before locking his muscles, and stumbling, turned to face Snape again. “Wasn't ready,” he ground out, still fighting the command.

    “No, but you won't be if the Dark Lord sends an alpha after you. He was an alpha himself, you know. But you stopped quickly _enough_ , perhaps... This is good, very good.”

    Snape's face was transformed, as if Harry's victory was his own. As his mate, Harry guessed that it kinda was. Harry's safety directly affected Snape's future now.

    “Can you release me?” Harry said between clenched teeth.

    “Does it get worse the longer you resist?”

    “No…”

    “Does it get worse the more commands I give?”

    “No. The same pressure, new command.”

_“Be at ease.”_

    Harry blew out his breath, then sucked in another one immediately after, feeling the fight leak out of him. Snape stared at him thoughtfully, tapping his lip as he contemplated what Harry'd just done.

    “Does it make you angry, when I don't listen?” Harry asked curiously. Every once in a while an alpha would be arrested for omega abuse, and Harry had a niggling thought since that first night that the man in front of him was a good candidate for that type of behavior. Especially with _Harry_ for a mate.

    That not-quite-smile appeared again. “Yes. But what else is new?”

    Harry grinned back, surprised and _charmed_ despite his very present knowledge of this man's numerous failings. “Yeah, I guess. Thank you for not commanding me to let you scent me.”

    Snape's soft look faded, and he became grim. “We need to talk about those memories.”

    Harry flattened his hair nervously, and Snape's eyes followed the motion. “When you did not have them in your head, you messed your hair up, instead.”

    Harry froze. “Uh, yeah. I was a little _off_ then.”

    “Your father used to do that. Mess up his hair, smile at girls.”

    Harry winced. He hadn't known that. It made him uncomfortable to think his father was anything like the boy he'd been those two days without his memories grounding him in reality. “I don't like those memories,” he said softly, “but you're right that they… they are a big part of what made me who I am. The worst parts of my upbringing.”

    “They abuse you.”

    Harry flinched largely. “No… no I don't think…”

    “I _saw_ it Potter. If the Ministry were to be informed, you would be removed from their care immediately.”

    “But they can't know. Dumbledore says I have to go. At least a month, every summer, to renew the blood protections.”

    Snape frowned. “Petunia's blood.”

    “Yeah.”

    Snape's eyes drifted to the front of Harry's robes, underneath which Harry wore his Muggle clothes. “You had hand-me-down clothes too. And your aunt chopped your hair. It bled. It was an accident, but she was rough, and she made you bleed.”

    “We are — _were_ , the same,” Harry agreed. “Only my hair grew back each time.”

    “Mine was cut — no matter how poorly — by my mother, in love… I didn't need protecting from that,” Snape said, head turning to the side.

    “I saw the bruise, in the memory where you were spying on my mum.”

    Snape looked angry, then defeated, then stubborn, then defeated again, all in quick succession. “Yes, Potter. My father. A Muggle.”

    “Is he another reason why you joined the Death Eaters too?”

    “Yes. Don't tell me you're coming to me as my mate so willingly because _you_ want to join Him and get revenge on Muggles as well.”

    “No! No, of _course_ not. I just am trying to understand… how you got there, to that place where you grovelled on your face... offering up my _mother_ on a silver platter.”

    Snape's nostrils flared in rage. “I _am_ sorry, Potter! _What do you want from me_?”

    “I DON'T KNOW! All I know is my _mate_ is the reason why my parents are dead, why I grew up in a home that _loathed_ the very thought of me, why every time Voldemort comes back, he's coming for _me_ first—"

    “DO NOT SAY THAT NAME!”

    “I WILL!” Harry shouted back.

    “I will,” he said again, breathing deeply for calm. “I will, I will, I _will_ because I _have_ to. Because this is who I have to be, who you've _made me into,_ Snape! A murderer or a victim, a killer just to stay _alive_ , or else _I_ die and everyone else dies after... these are my choices — this is my _destiny.”_ Tears rolled fat and thick down his face, a product of the extra estrogen flowing in his veins.

    “You are who you decide to be,” Snape refuted firmly. “If you want to turn away and leave the world behind, you can. Live in a remote village in the alps, grow crops and milk sheep for sustenance, completely separated from the rest of the world. It is your choice.”

    The very picture of it, of freedom and the guaranteed death of all he held dear in one imaginary package had Harry sobbing softly into his hands with longing and the desperate desire that it should never, ever happen. “No. I can’t do that. I can’t leave everyone behind.”

    “That is a choice you are making. The right choice, but still, not the only one. Potter, do you know what power of yours the Headmaster believes will ultimately defeat the Dark Lord? He told me, when I informed him of our discussion last week.”

    “What?” Harry asked, staring up at him through liquid eyes, searching for a ray of hope.

    “Love,” he said, though his lips pulled as if he thought the very word was ludicrous. Perhaps, in _his_ eyes it was... since it had gone so poorly for him before.

    Harry felt himself agreeing with the man. “ _Love?_ Love isn’t power.”

    Snape regarded his pessimism, frowning just slightly. “Your mother’s love saved your life, and defeated the Dark Lord the first time, not you. Dumbledore thinks your love for Hogwarts, your friends, even —” he colored, clearing his throat, “ _me_ , will one day save us all.”

    Harry gaped, tears forgotten, as the implication of such a thing rocked into his chest. “D-do — do I have to _sacrifice_ _myself_? Like she did?”

    Snape’s mouth popped open. “ _I will not allow it,_ ” he hissed. “Do you hear me Potter, I _WILL_ not allow it!”

    Harry stood from the chair, shaking and so uncoordinated that it nearly fell over behind him, scraping and then rocking back onto all four feet with a heavy clatter. “You can scent me,” he said, the words barely emerging out on his thin breath. “Please, I’m losing it —”

    Snape crossed over to him swiftly, tugging him forward and burying his nose in Harry’s neck. For his part, Harry yanked down that stupid high collar and shoved his own face in Snape’s, breathing in as deeply as he could and trying to avoid crying on the potion master’s starched black robes. After a few breaths the panic and fear faded as the warm scent of his mate insinuated itself into every crevice of his being. Once he regained control of himself, he realized that his nose was bumping up against a gland shield a lot like his own, but black.

    “You have a shield too? But you’re an alpha.” Snape hadn’t grabbed the back of his neck, just a hand pressed firmly on his upper back, so he was able to speak clearly without slurring.

    “I have many enemies. I have no wish to feel the emptiness of a improperly broken mating gland.” His nose rubbed up and back down Harry’s neck, and he felt himself shiver despite not ever having felt romantically towards the other man at all.

    “What do you feel when we do this?” Harry asked then, a little worried about what the answer would be after his own reaction just then.

    “Determined.”

    “Oh?” That nose went up and down again, and Harry shivered then, too.

    “Determined to keep you safe. Determined to provide for you, to never let Petunia or her fat husband and son get their hands on you again. Everything is right in the world, because you _are_ safe, and here, right now. And…”

    “Home?” Harry guessed, because that’s how he felt. Scenting Snape was like finally belonging, without trying.

    “Yes.”

    “I feel safe. I can't stop worrying, except when I smell you like this. Like I don’t have to worry, because you’re here. And home.”

    “It’s not sexual.” Harry flinched, because gawping at teenaged Snape in the Pensieve and feeling his mate's nose tickle along his neck just then _was_ slightly...  _exciting_ for him.

    “... No.”

    “Hmm.” Snape set Harry back, using a hold on his arms to push him away gently. “Thank you.”

    “I needed it too,” Harry said awkwardly.

    “There are many ways in which one can topple a Dark Lord, Potter,” he said then, returning to his seat. There was a smooth grace to his movements that Harry hadn’t noticed was absent over the past week until just then... after the man had been able to scent him and calm down. “In fact, Moody has just showed you one of them with his lesson on Curses. There is no need to throw yourself at his wand.”

    “Will you teach me?”

    “No. And if Moody tries to get you to use any of them as well, you run straight to the Headmaster, got it?”

    “Not the Curses. Ways to topple a Dark Lord. You said there are many. If it has to be me, will you teach me?”

    “You will rush, headlong, into this fight?”

    “I don’t think taking extra lessons is ‘rushing headlong...’”

    “There will be so many lessons on a regular basis… we will need a cover that detention just won’t provide.”

    “So you _will?”_

    “Don’t look so eager. I will approach the Headmaster. If — _and only if —_ he approves will I commence teaching you. The first thing will be Occlumency.”

    “Protecting my mind? Why not something else, like dueling?”

    “ _Because, Potter,_ if you do not learn how to protect your mind, the very next time you come across the Dark Lord all my secrets will be out in the wind. If I am to hope to one day blend in as his _humble servant —_ ” he said mockingly, “— you _must_ be able to hide _me_  from him. He is getting stronger, I don’t think he will hold off too many more years.”

    “How do you know that? That he’s getting stronger?”

    Snape hesitated, then rolled up his sleeve so that Harry could see his Mark, faded and grey, but still there. “It is getting darker. Likely, the others have begun to notice it as well. It is only a matter of time before the right one gives him what he needs to return in full.”

    “Not you.”

    “ _Decidedly_ not.” The sleeve was shoved back down with a huff. “I will talk to Professor Dumbledore about the lessons. You may return to your friends now.”

    “A rather short detention.”

    An eyebrow cocked up at him. “Do you want to _stay_?”

    “ _I'm lying to my friends_ to be here.I’d rather not draw attention and have to lie _more_. I brought my bag, I can do homework. I’m stacked with assignments, anyway.”

    Snape paused for a moment, then withdrew his own sheave of parchments and a pot of red ink. “In that case, so will I. You may clear a spot on the desk in front of you, or work at the table by the fireplace, your choice.”

    Work at Snape's desk? Right in _front_ of him? Despite the tentative peace they'd arrived at, there was really no question about how close he wanted to be to the man. Harry chose the fireplace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys have waited another week for this :) Thank you for your patience. I've been posting slower because I've also been *writing* slower. I worry that I'm going to catch up with myself and not be able to post quickly enough to satisfy everyone. In any case, I really do hope you enjoy this chapter, and how they've both responded to each other so far. Snape is a struggle to write... I just want to turn him into a cuddle bug right away and have to constantly fight myself! Haha
> 
> Oh! Also! Draco's one-liner in this chapter probably seems a little harsh, especially to those who frequently read delicious HP/DM fics, and especially with the curse word he used. I thought carefully over the wording of that line, and as dramatically over-the-top as it reads, there's subtext in it that goes along with the universe I have going on here. It will be referenced later.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imperio is cast on the fourth-year students as a test and Harry has his first 'remedial Potions' lesson.

# Chapter Five

    “ _Imperio_.”

    “Hop around the room the times while singing England's national anthem.”

    “What's that?” Ron whispered.

    “Muggle song, for English pride... or whatever,” Harry said back, as Dean sang 'God Save the Queen.’

    “This really is inhumane,” protested Hermione, but he noticed she didn't say it loud enough for Moody to hear.

    Lavender pretended to be a squirrel and Neville jumped and flipped around acrobatically under the professor's instruction.

    “Potter. You next.”

    Harry swallowed, remembering Snape's instruction to run straight to Dumbledore if Moody asked him to perform one of the curses. But he wasn't being asked to perform them, just attempt to throw it off.

    “Imperio!”

    A soothing calm washed over him, then, going even further than Snape's scent because it also made him _happy._ He felt like he was empty… weightless, floating gently, utter bliss…

_Jump onto the desk._

    No, don't do that.

    The two voices in his head spoke almost simultaneously.

_Jump onto the desk… Jump onto the desk…_

    That's stupid, I'm not going to do that.

_Jump! NOW!_

    “I DON'T WANT TO!”

    “Now, _that's_ more like it!”

    Harry blinked, and all the calm was gone.

    “Look at that, you lot… Potter _beat_ it! Let's do that again, and the rest of you, pay attention — watch his eyes, that's where you see it — very good, Potter, very good indeed! There'll be no controlling _you_!”

    Without warning, Moody cast, and the feeling came over him again.

 

* * *

 

    “You're staring at him again.”

    Harry wanted to jerk away, but the alpha command to not reveal Snape's secrets took hold and his head drifted slowly, almost bored, towards Hermione.

    “Hmm?”

    “You're staring at Moody.”

    Relief flooded Harry. She thought he was looking at _Moody_ , not Snape, whom he definitely _had_ been staring at. He didn't mean to be indiscrete, it was just that it had been weeks since that last detention, and after several classes of pretending to hate each other Harry was getting antsy to have proof the meetings weren't all just some crazed fever dream — not that he'd gotten a fever to blame it on. They’d almost come to a sort of common ground, and his instincts demanded he seek out some kind of _comfort_ from the man.

    “Wondering about the Curse. What it means,” he said vaguely.

    “Isn't it obvious? You were able to break it because you worked so hard to be able to break _alpha commands_. Physiologically your body is designed to obey them, and yet you can throw _them_ off with no difficulty at all. What's a little Imperius?”

    “Er… you're right, thanks ‘Mione.” He very purposefully did not mention the slight tang of jealousy in her words, and also resolved to stop mooning over Snape.

    However, during their very next Potions lesson, Snape vociferously demeaned his ability and demanded that he return for remedial lessons _‘if only to prevent the exalted savior from dropping dead due to his own brew,’_ and Harry was so pleased he was hard put to place an appropriately irate scowl on his face — even as Ron blustered angrily, earning Gryffindor a fifteen point drop.

 

* * *

 

    “You look _happy_.”

    “It's weird, isn't it. It feels weird.”

    Harry had bypassed the classroom, heading to Snape's office for his first lesson, arriving early just in case he was wrong and Snape wouldn't be there. But the door was already open when he came upon it, and the man was seated behind his desk with an eyebrow raised as if to say ‘so you did find me.’

    “You’re also early,” the Professor noted next.

    “I thought I'd come straight here, but just in case you were waiting for me in the classroom after all I added some travel time.”

    “Wouldn’t it have made sense to _peek_ in the classroom, instead of losing time you could have spent doing something else?”

    Harry didn’t respond, didn’t tell him he didn’t think that being early was such a bad thing as that — for whatever reason he might have been thinking that way... instincts again, no doubt. “Am I right that Dumbledore said you could teach me?”

    “ _Professor_ Dumbledore, Potter. Or Headmaster. I've allowed unthinkable leeway when it comes to how you address me, but it is a _conscious_ decision based on our… condition. Do not disrespect _him_ as well.”

    Harry blinked. “Our _condition_? You make it sound so flattering, Professor. I don't mean to be disrespectful. It just comes out without thinking.”

    “A good segue into our lesson today.”

    “Not thinking?”

    “Precisely. The whole school is agog with how you threw off the Imperius like it was a particularly nasty fly, Potter. If you manage to throw me off as well, I shall consider you a student worth my time.”

    “How do I do it?”

    “The specifics cannot be taught, individual to individual. You must feel out the right part of yourself, and _push,_ while clearing your mind completely of emotion, thought. You must be able to do this at all times… during your victories, your defeats, during your greatest fears and your nightmares come real, _you must be blank._ ”

    Harry frowned. “You do this.”

    “We have already established that I am an accomplished Occlumens, Potter.”

    “No, I mean… I’ve seen you do this. Blank face… no emotion when saying the most horrible things…”

    “Fear not that you’ll become a _‘horrid’_ Potions professor if you manage it,” Snape drawled, defensive.

    “No — I… actually… felt a bit sad. When does the real you come out?”

    Snape eyed him carefully, face flatter than ever.

    “Ever?” Harry whispered.

    “Why do you care, Potter?”

    Harry’s tongue worked in his mouth, wanting to answer but not sure how. He recalled the boy, only eight or nine years old, underfed with a bruise at the edge of his forehead, staring at his young, magical mum, longing for a friend. “I do,” he whispered finally, unable to answer the question as asked. “You let me get away with a lot, you say. Is _that_ the real you?”

    Snape looked away. “It’s hard to say, anymore. Take out your wand, Potter.”

    Harry obeyed, eyeing his teacher suspiciously. “So, clear my mind?”

    “— of emotion and thought. And push. Brace yourself now... _legilimens_!"

    By this point Harry was used to throwing off alpha commands at a drop of a hat. But apparently Legilimency was an entirely different ballgame. Similar to being in the Pensieve the office disappeared from view, but instead the images _flickered_ as he had experienced them instead of being able to walk around. He was five, one moment, he was nine, the next, the same age as Snape in the Pensieve — _Snape!_ _Push him out!_

    But how?

_Er… get out? Stop watching my memories… get out…_

    The memories stopped.

    “Did I do it?” he asked, excited.

    “No.”

    “... Oh.”

    “You talked a bit, but you had no _conviction_ , Potter. How do you stop alpha commands? How did you throw off the Imperius?”

    “Alpha commands… are about habit, I guess. It was drilled into me for hours and hours and now I just resist, immediately. But I can’t control it really… it was really hard to accept the command to keep your secrets. It felt like a genuine fight to let it in. Actually, in the end I couldn’t, could I. You helped me then.”

    “It is the hope that Occlumency will become the same instinctive reaction. There is no reason why someone should be skimming through your thoughts without your consent, so there should be no worry about that. And the Imperius?”

    “That was different. I had no fight, it felt like. But there was a voice, right away, arguing with what Moody wanted me to do. Maybe it was mine… but I had no control over it.”

    “It _was_ your voice. And when you broke the curse entirely?”

    Harry thought for a moment. “Let’s try again,” he said finally.

    “Clear your mind. No fear, no uncertainty. _Legilimens!_ ”

    His mother and father were waving at him out of an enchanted mirror… he was clinging, clutching onto the smoking, _screaming_ form of Quirrell — _no. Wait, I need to put more effort into it, NO!_

    The office was back, and Snape had toppled over.

    “Oh! Sir! Are you okay?”

    He took a step forward, unable to decide whether Snape would be _more_ furious with him if he tried to help, and watched the man right himself.

    “Did… did that work?”

    “It did, but I got too far in. You need to stop me sooner.”

    Harry flushed. “I wanted to see the first one.”

    “You won’t want the Dark Lord to see even a single moment, Potter. A single one. Even right now, this conversation, if he were to see it…”

    “Your life,” Harry said quietly. “Okay.”

    “Let’s try again, on the count of three. One, two, three, _legilimens!_ ”

    Playing with a broken toy soldier in his cupboard, _push._

    Snape was on the ground again.

    “Not soon enough,” he said.

    “Should… we get you a chair?”

    “I believe you will push me out of it.” Snape stood, brushing off his robes.

    “H-how do I s-stop it?”

    Snape looked at him incredulously. “Potter, are you _well?_ You have a strong mind, it wants to do what you ask of it, that's _good_.”

    “Is this a-an Omega thing?”

    Snape’s face cleared. “Work through it. Before you leave you can scent me, but for now I need your mind to confront this challenge. This is because you are worried you have hurt me, yes?”

    “Sounds right.” Harry twisted his hands nervously.

    “This is good practice then. Remember what I said about my scent becoming a barrier to growth, Potter. Grapple with your feelings and make them submit just like you fight down alpha commands. Clear your mind. Indicate to me when you are ready to try again.”

    Clear his mind? When the sight of his mate knocked head over tea kettle was _his fault?_ He felt a thread of despair —  _he was only fourteen, this was too much —_ before he shoved it away. There was no point to that avenue of thinking. How could he clear away all of his anxiety? He needed Snape's scent to do it, it was impossible on his own. But maybe if he…

    He closed his eyes and thought of Snape’s hand around his neck, of breathing deep against his skin. He remembered how when he was frightened to the point of hyperventilating just a few weeks ago in this very office, he’d reached out to the man and at first breath he knew everything would be okay. Even the first time he’d smelled the man in the Great Hall, not even knowing it was him in that moment, had been so calming, the calmest he’d ever felt…

    “Good, Potter. Tell me when you’re ready.”

    “Ready,” he said dreamily.

“ _Legilimens_!”

    This time, in his sea of imagined calm, he actually _felt_ the intrusion. With all his other feelings out of the way there was enough space to feel something else, and it was so light, no wonder why he’d not felt it before. The point of impact for the spell was as thin as the memories Snape had removed from him, thinner than any real string he’d ever seen.

    “You let me get farther that time!” Snape said, incensed.

    “Oh,” he said, suddenly realizing that images had been flashing the entire time he’d been examining the feel of the spell. “I was studying it, I guess. When I was relaxed I could feel it.”

    “You couldn’t before?” he asked frowning.

    “No… I guess I am always a little worked up,” he said, scratching his head and looking away in embarrassment. “I never realized before. Always a little nervous. It wasn’t until I got that out of the way that I could feel it. It’s very subtle.”

    “It wouldn’t be much use if it wasn’t,” he said wryly.

    “I wasn’t expecting it. You say the spell so firmly I keep expecting a wrecking ball, not a… microscopic feather.”

    Snape’s mouth twitched into that not-smile. Harry eyed it… definitely feeling as greedy as little Snape…

    “ _Legilimens_!”

    Harry had no warning, but he searched for the feeling again, and tried to nudge it out more gently this time. Then the intrusion moved, and he went to nudge it again in the new spot, only to find that it went right back to the previous spot which he’d left unguarded.

    He was in his cupboard, watching Dudley opening presents through the slats… _push._

    This time as soon as the office revealed itself, Harry rushed forward, sensitive alpha egos be damned.

    “I’m fine,” Snape snapped.

    “I _need_ to help you!” he snapped right back. "I’m _growing_ here, deal with it!”

    Then the unexpected happened. Snape _laughed._ It was deep and full, and Harry, who had successfully hauled him up, lost himself in it. “I don’t get why that was funny,” he said, but it came out wheezy, so he stepped back to his previous place with a few squeezing blinks and a shake of his head to restore his sanity.

    “You did better that time,” Snape said _— smiling —_ though it did have a lazy curve to it, “but I still got through.” He frowned then. “How’s your head?”

    “My… head?” Harry put his hands up into his hair, feeling around, then to his scar, his ears…

    “I’m guessing that little examination means it does not hurt,” Snape said calmly.

    “Er… no. Is it supposed to?”

    “You have not let me get _too_ far, perhaps that is why you are standing before me, hale and hearty. By the end of this lesson I expected you to be sickly, shivering, and back to hating my guts.”

    Harry’s mouth quirked at the rather immature phrase. “That’s good, then, right? I mean, about the headache. Of course — about the other — there are still… _things…_ unresolved, but —”

    Snape interrupted him before he could babble onwards. “You are still waiting for my attack. If you concentrate fully, I should not be able to poke and prod at all.”

    “I just focused on the point the spell entered, that time.”

    “A great exercise in control, surely, but not a good defense strategy. Your whole mind needs protection, not just a small section.”

    Harry chewed his lip. “But how? Just… concentrate? That's all?”

    “It is highly subjective to the person defending. Why don't you let me in, then _slowly_ push just until you can see clearly again?”

    “Then I won't knock you over?”

    “Hmm,” he responded noncommittally.

    “I will?”

    “How dismayed you look. Ready yourself, Potter. One, two, three — _legilimens!_ ”

    Piers and Malcolm were holding him down, Dudley was pummeling his stomach —

    The office snapped back into view, punctuated by Snape's loud growl. “That wasn't one you shared with me,” he said through his teeth.

    “A successful Harry Hunting session,” he replied, eyeing the alpha carefully. “After that one, accidental magic kept me rather safe.” Another snarl left the man, and Harry shut his mouth. Snape had seen the memories... he knew Harry hadn't been kept well after that; he knew that episodes of accidental magic had gotten him in trouble also.

    After a moment, Snape's face cleared as if by force and he spoke again. “I am in control. Let's try again as we planned. _Legilimens!_ ”

    Ginny's elbow in the butter dish… _push, but just a little, don't hurt him…_ He could see Snape then, through the flickering image. Letters were raining down, he was desperate to catch one… _have_ _to push more, to the point where it's completely see-through…_

    After a moment of holding it there, Snape dropped his wand. “Don't let go of it, Potter. _Legilimens!_ ”

    Nothing happened.

    “Remember this feeling. Do you have it?”

    Harry frowned, but nodded.

    “Let it go. Tell me Potter, are you excited for the Tournament?”

    “Er… yes? Why?”

    “What about it are you looking forward to?”

    “It sounds absolutely ridiculous in the best way.” Snape's scent was making him speak unfiltered again. He might have said something more intelligent, like _‘I'm interested in seeing the older students battle difficult challenges,’_ had he a better head on his shoulders.

    “An interesting opinion. Now, Potter, that you've been suitably distracted, pull up that feeling again.”

    He barely had time to recall it before Snape was calling out “ _Legilimens_!”

    He'd almost gotten it right, the images of weeding flower beds under the hot summer sun were only half opacity. He pushed, and then they were gone.

    “Didn't expect you to call it up at all,” Snape said with a proud smirk.

    “I'm starting to get that headache.”

    “We'll stop soon. You have surpassed my expectations. I wonder, can you call it up properly before it's time to go?”

    Harry rolled his head, shook out this shoulders, and then dipped into a mock fighting stance as he recalled the feeling, pushing a bit harder than he had previously. “Bring it on.”

    “ _Legilimens!_ ”

    Harry grinned. It had worked.

    “There. You are, after all, a student worth my time.”

    Harry _beamed_.

    “Your technique is… odd, though. You are still thinking and feeling underneath, aren't you?”

    Harry opened his mouth twice before finally agreeing, wondering if he had actually failed, after all.

    “Yes, I thought so. I believe you are intentionally pulling up your magic, as a shield, instead of setting aside your thoughts. You will have trouble if you are put in an enchanted sleep and bespelled in that manner, though that is quite unlikely.”

    “I can't… lose access to my magic?”

    “No. There is no known way to quash or strip the magic from a wizard, or else our prisons might be oriented more humanely. You know, if you practice with it, you might be able to use your connection to perform feats wandlessly.”

    “Is that _possible_?”

    “The best and brightest can perform a few tasks without a wand,” Snape said slowly.

    Harry slumped. “Well, I'm neither of those.”

    “The average wizard might spend _years_ under the Imperious, Potter, never able to mitigate its effects. You threw it off — when it was cast by one of the Ministry's most tenacious Aurors, no less — without a moment's pause, on your _first taste of it_. You have developed a — well, _working_ defense to Legilimency in just one class. You're the only one in recorded history to deny their true mate his commands when not under some sort of extreme duress. Whether it's dumb luck or just plain stubbornness, you're certainly the best at _something._ ”

    Harry gawped. “That is… a very nice thing to say.”

    “Well,” he said, coloring. “We can end here. Practice holding your… _shield_ , for lack of a better term, in mind until our next lesson, same time next week. I _will_ test it during the day, you'd better not throw me into the wall or I _will_ assign you real detentions with Mr. Filch.”

    Harry was properly horrified, a fact which obviously pleased Snape. “Oh, good, still got it,” the man said smugly, before regarding him speculatively. “Are you still feeling uncertain?”

    “Yeah, it's itching, right under my skin.”

    “Come on, then.”

    He was nervous to step up to the man, completely under his own steam, to place his hands on his mate's chest and rise up on his tip-toes to reach the man's neck. Snape bent to make it easier, then after a moment succumbed to his open temptation and stuck his nose in Harry's neck as well.

    “I will kill the Dursleys,” the alpha growled then.

    “No, you won't," Harry rebutted confidently, no trace of fear in his system when he was flooded with the feeling of safety and rightness with every pass of air through his nostrils.

    A pause, then, “No, I won't. I _would_ have.”

    “You would?”

    “... No. I've never directly killed somebody.”

    Harry leaned into him a bit more securely, a major fear lifted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Saturday, everyone! :D


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The foreign students arrive and the champions are chosen.

# Chapter Six

    “How d’you reckon they're coming? The train?” Ron said as they waited for the foreign students to arrive.

    I doubt it,” Hermione responded, without elaborating.

    Harry took his turn to guess next. “How, then? Broomsticks?”

    “I don't think so… not from that far away…”

    Harry peeked over at Snape at the back while everyone was looking the other way and bit his lip hard to prevent a grin from forming. The man was positively _sour_ , waiting for the other schools to show. He looked like he'd just chomped his way through an entire bucket of lemons... though that could be from standing next to Moody. Harry resolved to keep his omega impulses under control around the man's magical eye. At this distance, he surely wouldn't have known Harry was deliberately seeking Snape, but if he saw the quelled grin, he might get curious enough to keep an _eye_ out…

    “Aha! Unless I'm very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!”

    Harry peered out, trying to see what the Headmaster had, until a sixth year screamed out, “There!”

    And indeed, something _was_ coming, flying through the air at a dizzying speed, and it was only when it had gotten close that they could see it was a team of flying horses, gold in color, pulling a light blue carriage behind them.

    “My dear Madame Maxime, welcome to Hogwarts,” the Headmaster greeted as a large woman disembarked.

    “Dumbly-dorr. I 'ope I find you well?”

    “In excellent form, I thank you.”

    “My pupils,” the giantess said with remarkable casualness, gesturing idly behind her. There were only twelve boys and girls behind her, surprising Harry who'd imagined an entire school's worth of students flooding the castle.

    The delegation entered the school to warm themselves before the Bulgarian school arrived. Harry didn't blame them one bit, even with his warmer uniform and scarf he'd begun to shiver —

    Warmth flowed over him, then, and he glanced around — everyone else was still huddled up against the cold — and chanced a look back… Snape was glaring fiercely at him, his arm moving back and then down as if he might have been pocketing his wand. Harry gave his very best ‘thank you, you might actually be awesome after all,’ sneer of loathing right back at him before turning around again. _Score one for having an alpha mate,_ he thought with a shocked kind of fondness.

    Then, Ron spoke. “Can you hear something?”

    “The lake!” cried Lee Jordan.

    Thusly Durmstrang arrived, their great wooden ship popping up out of the water like a cork in the bathtub, approaching the shore and setting down a plank for the Headmaster and students to descend from.

    “Dumbledore! How are you, my dear fellow, how are you?” The man, clothed in silver furs, had an easy smile which did not affect his cold, assessing gaze.

    “Blooming, thank you, Professor Karkaroff,” said in return.

    “Viktor, come along, into the warmth... You don't mind, Dumbledore? Viktor has a slight head cold…”

    Ron slugged him in the arm. “Harry — it's Krum!”

    “ _Watch it_ ,” he hissed, rubbing the place Ron had socked him and casting a worried glance to his mate, who was thankfully otherwise distracted. With the memories he'd so recently viewed, he didn't think Snape would react well to Harry being pummeled again, even just by an overly-excited friend. With glances and warming charms they'd already taken too many risks in the past few minutes... an incensed professor growling out warnings was not at the top of Harry's must-have list.

    During the feast Ron drooled over Krum and one of the French girls alternatively — “They don't make them like that at Hogwarts!” — he'd exclaimed, to which Harry'd rolled his eyes and flicked his gaze up to the staff table to Snape, almost compulsively. Despite the strangeness of _that_ instinct, an odder moment still happened upon leaving, when the Durmstrang headmaster had stopped in his tracks, eyes boggling at Harry face and then up at his scar.

    “Yeah, that's Harry Potter,” Moody had grumbled then. Karkaroff startled, moved away from them, and traffic had started up again... but Harry's omega instincts had left him with an uneasy feeling in his gut. He couldn't help but notice some of the Bulgarian students’ speculative looks when they'd realized who he was.

 _'Push,’_ he reminded himself, and Occluded. It didn't make him feel any better — like Snape had noticed, he didn't push aside his feelings when he did it — but it _did_ have the positive effect of helping him feel closer to his mate, even if he was currently half the school away.

    The next morning Fred and George tried to trick Dumbledore's age line and were tossed across the Hall, long white beards having sprouted on their faces. Durmstrang had already all put their names in, and then Beauxbatons entered theirs as well. Harry heard of a few Hogwarts students who had entered, like Angelina Johnson, and he wondered what George thought of his omega mate entering. He hoped the boy was supportive… if Harry'd been seventeen he would have entered himself, and he would have liked his alpha to be proud of him.

    That night, in advance of the announcement, he got his answer.

    “Hope it's Angela,” Fred said as they waited eagerly.

    “Hey! That's my line!” George protested. He turned to his mate then. “I really do. You'd be amazing.”

    It seemed an entire lifetime later when finally the plates cleared and Dumbledore stood to begin the ceremony.

    “The champion for Durmstrang will be Viktor Krum,” Dumbledore read first.

    “No surprises there!” Ron hollered shamelessly.

    “The champion for Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour.”

    “It's her, Ron!” Harry yelled, prodding his friend without mercy.

    “The Hogwarts champion is Cedric Diggory!”

    “No!” Ron protested, but the uproar at the Hufflepuff table quite drowned him out.

    “Excellent,” Dumbledore said, smiling.

    Then, the goblet spat out another name.

    “Harry Potter.”

 _His_.

    Harry's denials came immediately to his lips.

    “I did not put my name in.” His eyes sought out Snape's for support — it seemed they did that without his permission every time he practically _breathed_ _in_ wrong these days. He shook his head frantically when he caught sight of those pressed-tight lips and fierce eyes. “I did not put my name in!” he called louder. There was no way the entire Hall didn't hear that, with how silent it was.

    Snape's scowl deepened as McGonagall scurried to the Headmaster, sharing something in an unheard whisper. Harry continued to shake his head at Ron and Hermione gaped at him soundlessly. “I didn't. You know I didn't,” he pleaded.

    “Harry Potter! Harry! Up here, if you please!” the Headmaster urged again. Harry rather felt like he was marching to his death. Snape was still glaring. It seemed genuine, like he didn't have to fake it this time. Harry hated it.

    Fleur looked at him as he entered the room that held the other champions. “What is it? Do zey want us back in ze Hall?”

    But Ludo Bagman cleared it up for him, so _helpful_ , since Harry's own tongue was lost. “Extraordinary! Absolutely extraordinary! Gentlemen... Lady, may I introduce — incredible though it may seem — the fourth Triwizard champion?”

    The hostility that followed this announcement made Harry want to sink into the floor. It was a relief when Headmaster Dumbledore entered with Ms. Lufkin, the Head of the Department for International Magical Cooperation, Professor Karkaroff, Madame Maxime, Professor McGonagall, and following up in the rear, Snape.

    The latter-most glared at him hotly still, and Harry found himself unable to look away.

 _'I didn't do it… I'm innocent,’_ he tried to convey. He silently begged for Snape to skim his thoughts just then like he'd threatened to at the end of their lesson. He pushed his innocence up, ripe for the picking, but that glare held. If only he could _shove_ his thoughts at Snape and then —

    A look of horror crossed Snape's face as Harry's vision clouded with a thick, glowing white substance. Harry blinked, and touched his cheeks, and there, clinging to his finger, hung a memory strand.

    Frantically he brought it up to his temple — had he _really_ just pushed a memory out from his _eyes_? — and looked to Snape who had called the attention of the room to himself by castigating Harry verbally.

    “— for Potter's determination to break rules. He has been crossing lines ever since he got here.”

    “Thank you, Severus,” the Headmaster said, a stern tone filtering through his voice. Snape's eyes leapt back to Harry's clean ones, and then he was warmed, looking backwards at Snape's sneering face as the man tucked away his wand… staring, shocked, at a plate of his favorites while the professor talked of being an alpha… _oh. Right. How do I direct him to the right memories?_ He was watching Durmstrang students put their name in the goblet… Fred and George were blasted away, then sported beards as they sat back up… his name had just come out and he was appalled, pleading internally for his mate, then his friends, to believe him…

    Snape blinked and looked away and Harry did too, huffing slightly as though he'd just done exercise of some sort. Bagman was speaking.

    “But Karkaroff, it doesn't work like that. The goblet of Fire's just gone out — it won't reignite until the next tournament —”

    “— In which Durmstrang will most certainly not be competing! After all our meetings and negotiations and compromises, I little expected something of this nature to occur! I have half a mind to leave now!”

    “Empty threat, Karkaroff. You can't leave your champion now. He's got to compete. They've all got to compete. Binding magical contract, like Dumbledore said. Convenient, eh?” Harry had stiffened as soon as that voice rang out from the door. If Moody had seen through the wall the memory leaking from Harry's face... if Moody had seen _Snape_ using Legilimency on him…

    He studiously avoided looking in his mate's direction at all, just in case.

    “Convenient? I'm afraid I don't understand you, Moody,” Karkaroff scoffed, though the effect was ruined by his obvious nerves.

    The Auror continued his rant unabated. “Don't you? It's very simple, Karkaroff. someone put Potter's name in that goblet knowing he'd have to compete if it came out.”

    Harry twitched. He earnestly wished to look and see what his mate thought of that argument on his behalf. Worried that he was going to succumb to the urge to seek his mate's opinion, Harry Occluded as he had the previous night, hoping to remind himself that they were still a team. He reminded himself underneath the bubble of protection that he still had his scheduled 'remedial Potions’ class to convince the man of his innocence... it would be alright. Around them Moody and the others bickered, the Auror insisting someone nefarious _wanted him to die_ and the others, incredulous, unable to believe that could possibly be the case.

    When Dumbledore called for any other ideas, any way for Harry not to be included and got none, he suggested they move on.

    “Headmaster, you cannot be serious,” growled Snape. His face was full of contempt but Harry heard — or maybe he imagined, delusional as he seemed to be these days when it came to the man — a note in his voice which indicated a quite _different_ emotion _._ Concern.

    “I'm afraid there is no other way for it. Artemisia, want to do the honors?”

    “The first task is for the brave,” the woman said softly. “There will be no hints given for this round. You must find great daring when confronting the unknown on November twenty-fourth, in front of your classmates and our panel of judges. No outside help will be permitted from your teachers to complete the tasks in the tournament. You will only be able to bring your wand into the arenas, and you will receive information about the second task only when the first has been completed. And of course,” she said with a rewarding smile, “all champions are exempted from their end-of-year tests.”

    And that marked the end of the meeting. Dumbledore was turned down for drinks with the other headmasters — it really was shaping up to be a rather poor exercise in international cooperation — and then he turned to the two Hogwarts champions.

    “Cedric,” he said softly, “why don't you head on up to your common room? I'm sure your housemates are eagerly waiting to celebrate with you.”

    “What about Potter?” said Moody sharply.

    “Detention,” Snape said silkily, catching Dumbledore's intense look immediately. “Organized a week ago. Surely, Moody, if you came to the staff room more often you might have known for yourself…”

    Snape was a good liar.

    “Surely the boy has enough getting on with tonight,” the Auror growled.

    “No, I think not. I think two hundred lines of 'I will not _cross the line_ ’ will do the trick, won't it, Potter?”

    Harry tried to keep up appropriately with the turns their bickering took — devastated, then hopeful, then angry, now he should be suitably _mutinous_ , he thought, hoping his scrunched up face looked anything other than constipated. When the Headmaster smoothed his hand over a smile he didn't think he quite managed it.

    “Fine,” Harry grumbled, stomping out of the room before Moody could fight any more battles for him. Cedric exited alongside him.

    “Really Potter, how'd you do it?” the older boy asked.

    “I didn't. I was telling the truth,” Harry said, and didn't have to fake frustration that time.

    “Come, Potter. Let's not hold the _real_ champion up any longer,” Snape said, sneering as he swished by.

    Harry followed quickly, still working on perfecting his grumpy expression while internally he was reeling over the role reversal of the evening; now  _he_ was the one who had to prove himself to his mate. He hoped his sincerity had been enough. Had Snape seen enough in his mind? It was an awful occasion to suddenly realize that he didn't know how much the man gleaned when picking through his head. Could he  _feel_ what Harry had? That he _needed_ Snape to believe him?

... For whatever reason he would feel that way...?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suddenly Harry's the one in the hot seat! Poor boy, Snape did not appear to think very kindly of him when his name came out :(
> 
> So much drama. *sigh* ;)


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the Champions being chosen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you J.K. I used your brilliant quotes to make this fanmade fiction work -- again.

# Chapter Seven

    “How far do you think that eye can see?” Harry murmured.

    “I don't know. Look properly angry, Potter, you look like someone's just goosed you.”

    Harry's face flamed, and he pressed down his eyebrows determinedly.

    “Better. Hold it till we get into my office.”

    Snape started speaking the moment his spells took hold. “That was a risk we could not afford… he shouldn’t have done that. _Damn_ it, Albus.”

    Harry ignored the very conspicuous use of a swear word; he had something burning in his gut he _needed_ to declare. “I didn’t put my name in.”

    The Professor’s hand came up to rub the space between his brows. “Yeah, I got that, Potter. You should not have had enough control to leak your memories like that. Even _I_ don’t — though I have imagined…”

    “Imagined?”

    Snape looked at him, lips pursing as if deciding whether or not to reveal something particularly displeasing. “Imagined myself on my deathbed, surrounded by those who wronged me, pouring out memories that would prove how wrong they were about me, how I was the greatest boy — or man, now — they ever knew, to hurt them all, one last time…”

    Harry took a compulsive step forward, hands out in a faint grasping shape, before getting control of himself.

    “That’s awful,” he rasped. “I don’t… I don’t want you to think like that. Don’t —”

    “I should have seen this coming.”

    “Seen… what?” Harry said, arms dropping, struck by the soft tone in Snape’s voice.

    “The time we’re spending, the times we’ve scented each other — it’s already forming the bond between us.”

    “I thought we were _already_ bonded. True mates, and all.”

    “There is an undeniable connection right away, that’s true. But now… I can see it on you. Just now, you would have grabbed me if you thought you could get away with it wouldn’t you?”

    “Well you said something particularly upsetting,” Harry muttered, glaring.

    “Harry, you _pushed your mind through your eyeballs_ _just_ to prove your innocence to me!”

    “You’re one to speak, Mister Warming-Charm- _right_ -in-front-of-Moody! Mister… calling-me-by-my-first-name-just-now!”

    “Yes,” Snape said, rather deflating the fight right out of Harry. “I’ve noticed it affecting me as well. The urge to cover every available surface of my office in food offerings is particularly annoying.”

    “It has been two months,” said Harry reasonably. “Two months spent adventuring in each other’s head. It makes sense that things would advance.”

    That non-malicious half-smirk graced Snape’s face, then. “I rather think _I_ did most of the so-called ‘ _adventuring_.’ You only saw two memories. Two _hand-picked_ memories.”

    “Wanna let me have a go?” Harry said, spinning his wand in his hand and nearly dropping it in his attempt to look cool.

    “I think not,” he replied dryly, eyes glittering with humor as they drifted over Harry’s embarrassment. Then he sobered. “I had not wanted to establish such a connection before your first heat.”

    “Why not?” With the subject change his cheeks stayed warm.

    “Instead of being… generally miserable, you will instead feel drawn to me, in particular. It is not what I would have wished for any fourteen year old mate of a thirty-four year old.”

    The last part was spoken quite bitterly. Harry had the urge to do his duty and soothe him, but he didn’t know how. He had been drawn physically to 19-year-old Snape in the Pensieve, even had a few embarrassing dreams to that effect, but not to the grown man in front of him — beyond what his instincts demanded of him for comfort and safety.

    “Well,” he said finally. “What will be, will be.”

    “A mature approach,” Snape huffed, though without sarcasm. He looked Harry over searchingly, head to toe. “People have died in the Tournament, Potter. Many people. As much as I hate the man, I fear Moody is right.”

    “It can only be Voldemort, can’t it?” Harry said glumly. “I’ve thought it over on the way down… who else again and again has expressed a desire to kill me? If the cup had to be Confunded, like he said, it’s not like my friends could have done it, for a laugh…”

    “Must you insist on saying his name?”

    “Yes,” Harry said. Snape had sounded resigned, like perhaps it would be the last time they would have that fight. Harry hoped so, at least.

    “I don’t know who could have done it, but I doubt it was the Dark Lord. It’s not like he can just waltz right in and Charm the goblet and then walk right back out again.”

    “No, but surely he’s possessed someone… gotten followers, perhaps… just this summer I saw —”

    “Saw what?” Snape’s tone had sharpened to a crisp point.

    “A dream, I had. I haven’t felt easy telling anyone about it, but it felt so real at the time…”

    “What _dream,_ _Potter_?”

    “Voldemort, a giant snake called Nagini, and a blond man, who killed a Muggle. Then they talked about how they were going to come after me, soon, too.”

    Snape’s pale skin turned stark white. “You saw him? You saw the Dark Lord? He has a body?”

    Harry took another uneasy step forward, before freezing again. “No. He was… a thing. A child-sized, no, maybe infant-sized, _thing._ But he raised a wand all by himself to cast — what I realize now must have been — the Killing Curse.”

    Snape’s indomitable will seemed to be weakening before his very eyes. Deciding _‘sod it all,’_ Harry took the last several steps forward and pulled the man’s head down to his neck.

    “I am not a woman in need of _smelling salts_ , Potter,” he complained, though he wrapped his arms around Harry’s elbows as well, and lifted so that he could stand more comfortably and Harry’s feet dangled.

    “I definitely feel young now,” he commented, kicking his feet testingly.

    “This isn’t _good_ , Potter,” Snape growled into his neck. “Maybe it was just a dream, but maybe it wasn’t. Who was the blond? Lucius?”

    “No,” Harry said, experimentally smelling up near Snape’s hairline. Oddly enough, it smelled _good,_ despite how greasy it always appeared. It smelled clean, like he’d used some sort of scented product on it, and Harry wondered if his whole Hogwarts career he’d been disgusted by it while it sat there innocently, smelling of _flowers._ “He was younger, hair shorter, a bit darker. _Your_ hair smells good.”

    “Nice of _someone_ to finally notice,” the man said smugly. Harry had been prepared for the man to be angry, insulted, and was pleased his words had landed well. “I use conditioning potions. If _others_ cannot tell how healthy my hair is, it’s their problem.”

    “This is so bizarre.”

    “They sell quite well,” Snape sniffed, but seeing as his nose was quite firmly buried in Harry’s neck it rather lost its intended effect.

    “ _You_ make them? And sell them? _Truly_ bizarre,” Harry said again, testing out whether a friendly, teasing sort of tone would be as well-received as the compliment. He lifted his hand, keeping his elbows still within the Professor's hold, and tested the _feel_ of the hair, as well. It didn’t feel coarse... not like his own hair at all. Instead it slipped through his fingers like silk — the refined stuff Aunt Petunia’s couch cushions had on their tassels. He threaded his hands through again, enjoying the sensation as it passed by the pads of his fingers.

    “You should grow your hair long like Malfoy Senior. Your hair is _amazing._ ”

    Snape set him down then, cheeks darkly magenta as he backed up a step, looking away from Harry. “ _You_ are bizarre, Potter. When I first smelled you — realized it _was_ you — I was sure my life was entering a fresh layer of Hell.”

    “Flattering,” Harry said, feeling stung.

    Snape ran a hand over the nose that seconds ago had been pressed into the tender skin of Harry’s neck, thinking. “Mated to the son of my greatest enemy and my greatest love, his very spitting image — and just as arrogant besides…” His gaze returned to Harry, flickering down to the upset turn of his mouth as he spoke again. “But that’s not the case at all, is it? All this time I thought I had you figured out the way no one else could… that I could see straight through to the heart of things where others were blind… but I was wrong. So wrong.”

    Harry’s stomach clenched in fear and anticipation. Is this the point where the professor started confessing some sort of _tender_ feeling? He couldn’t imagine such a thing, yet, from the words he was clearly speaking...

    “I’m afraid I must cut your lesson short, Mr. Potter. I must get this news to the Headmaster at once, if we are to prepare… if we are to keep you safe…” The words were like a bucket of ice water down his back, but he nodded anyway, understanding.

    “I will walk you back to your tower.”

    “Thank you, professor,” he said softly.

    “You are… well, it’s fine, Potter. Prepare yourself to appear appropriately hot-headed.”

    Once satisfied Harry’s frown was securely in place, he lifted the spells and guided Harry back to his tower.

    “Balderdash,” Snape spoke to the sleeping portrait as soon as they were within range.

    “Good _night_ , Professor,” he snarled, though he bravely chanced a wink — very aware that it was the first wink he’d ever given, his entire life — before scrambling through the hole.

    “Night, Potter,” he heard just before it closed.

    The common room was trashed, but empty. It seemed as if there had been a celebration after all. Trudging up the stairs, he entered the dormitory where all the boys were asleep except for Ron, who was giving him an odd, toothy kind of smile as he came into view.

    “Er — what’s up,” he said mildly, worrying for half a second Ron had followed him, had somehow seen something between Snape and he that he wasn’t supposed to —

    “So. Congratulations.”

    Harry’s caution multiplied ten-fold. Ron’s whole face was transformed by his pained smile, it set Harry’s own teeth on edge just to look at his best mate right then. “Congratulations? For what?”

    “Well… no one else got over the age line. Not even Fred and George. What did you use — the Invisibility Cloak?” Harry relaxed minutely as he realized his connection to Snape was still securely unknown.

    “What?" he asked, truly confused now as to the actual source of this one-person ambush. "The Cloak would never had worked.”

    “Oh, right. I thought you might’ve told me if it was the cloak... because it would have covered both of us, wouldn't it? But you found another way, did you?”

    Harry might have missed the tone in his voice had it not been for the time spent with Snape, master of cutting wit.

    “Listen,” he said firmly, “I didn't up my name in that goblet. It _must_ have been someone else.”

    Ron did not seem to buy that, at all. “What would they do that for?”

    “Moody seems to think it's an attempt in order to get me killed. Again.”

    Ron scoffed. “But those times people were never after you, were they? No, _you_ decided to go rushing into it…”

    “I didn't put my name in!” Harry shouted.

    “Shut it, we're sleepin’...” came from Seamus's bed then.

    Ron ignored the irritated plea. “Yeah, okay. Only, I didn't see you last night? Did I?”

    “I was sleeping! _You_ were sleeping!”

    “Know that for a fact do you?” Ron said challengingly. “Awake to see me? I'm not stupid you know.”

    “You're doing a pretty good impression of it,” he snarled then, a bit of his growl slipping through.

    Ron's face flattened, almost as good as Snape’s. “Yeah? You'll want to get to bed, Harry. I expect you'll need to be up early tomorrow for a photo-call or something.”

    Harry _refused_ to honor his prat friend's idiocy with another word. He turned away immediately, and as both boys threw their curtains closed, Dean's voice moaned, “ _Finally_.”

    Hermione was waiting for him when he left the tower the next morning, breakfast in her hand and offering to go with him outside for a walk. Relieved that at least one friend was sticking by him — and indeed she told him _she'd_ believed him immediately — Harry poured out his guts, leaving out his conversation with Snape but telling her how Moody was insistent someone wanted him hurt, or dead, and how he was afraid he knew the exact kind of evil wizard that might have done it.

    In return, Hermione told him the reason for Ron's strange behavior: he was jealous. Maybe it was supposed to have helped Harry understand, to sympathize with the redhead, but it just made Harry all the angrier. Without Quidditch, the only thing worth being jealous of these days was his undefinable, un _explainable_ connection to their 'greasy git, bat of the dungeons,’ and he knew Ron would rather drop dead than be in his place with _that._

    A jealous growl — he really had lost his marbles completely, hadn’t he? — escaped at the thought of the two of them together, and Hermione stared at him as if he had lost it in _her_ eyes as well.

    “Really, Harry, if you'd just speak with him…” But that really was the last thing Harry wanted right now.

    “I've got to go, Hermione. Might as well tell Sirius and Remus about the newest _development._ ” He spun away with a snap of his robes worthy of his mate, and stormed off to the Owlery.

 

* * *

 

 

> Sirius,
> 
> Things are well, except someone's put my name in the Goblet of Fire — I definitely didn't — and now I'll be competing, I guess. The other champion from Hogwarts, the _real_ one, honestly, is Cedric Diggory, from Hufflepuff.
> 
> Our mutual _friend_ is well, and I'm sure would send his greetings, if he ever found himself wanting to do so.
> 
> Harry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there is is... Snape and Harry on the edge of an understanding, but not quite ever finishing their thoughts enough to get there fully.
> 
> And Ron, being exactly as much an ass as he was in canon. Whenever I've read a ron-bashing fic since scouring over that fight for this fic, I am no longer unconvinced by the wild swings of temper others might have him display. I mean... some... he's not /evil-homicidal/... but yeah, angry yelling betrayal is totally within this guy's wheelhouse, what a jerk he was when Harry was being maneuvered to his wished-for *death*
> 
> Gah.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry discovers what the school thinks of him being chosen as champion. Harry attends 'Remedial Potions' and scores a huge win — even though it doesn't feel like one at the time.

# Chapter Eight

    Almost as soon as he'd descended from the Owlery, Harry discovered that Ron was not the only Hogwarts student who thought terribly of him for having been chosen. He immediately regretted having left Hermione in that preposterous jealous snit of his — that she had nothing to do with! — and leaving himself unguarded amongst the harsh whispers and contemptuous looks that we're being sent his way by every student he came across.

    Harry hadn't thought much could be worse than being suspected as the Heir of Slytherin, but being chosen against his will to participate in the tournament absolutely was. Over the course of the following week he was horrified to experience that the ostracization was even worse than in first year when he'd gotten caught sending Norbert out of the tower and lost 150 points overnight. It was so much worse because now _Ron_ was one of those who'd turned his back on Harry, and he was all alone in the trouble. He handled it well enough during the day, but at night his stupid girly hormones had him covering his face with his pillow so he wouldn't be overheard weeping.

    During his first, particularly rough double-Potions lesson since the ceremony, Harry Occluded frantically as the Slytherins jeered and Hermione said in monotone next to him 'Ignore them, ignore them, ignore them.” He found it hard to hold his shield — its effect of helping him feel like he was connected to Snape was rather muted while the man swept around the room, egging on the taunters and chuckling darkly at a particularly rousing joke. It flickered in and out much like his memories under _legilimens_ , and at one point, frustrated, Harry _pushed_ out so far that his ingredients and stirrer had gone flying, skittering across the floor.

    “POTTER!” Snape shouted, stalking over and taking hold of his shoulder with a claw-shaped hand that was much gentler than anyone else could have guessed. “Wasting the school's provided ingredients, are you? Well, it's _good_ that you have Remedial Potions, tonight, isn't it?”

    He was sneering and callous but Harry read between the lines: _‘Hold on a little longer. We'll talk tonight.’_

    “I think... instead of spending my evening trying to cram more formulas into your pathetically dense brain, I shall have you _painstakingly_ sort out the ingredients that you so _obviously_ disrespect.” As the students around them snickered at his expense, the Professor did a fair amount of nasty chuckling himself... but his scent had wrapped around Harry comfortingly and the Gryffindor was able to handle the pretend rejection better.

    “No,” the Professor said then, with a put-upon sigh. “With the rate _you_ learn... I cannot stop now. The sorting will have to wait for your detention.”

    The Slytherins could laugh, Hermione could send soft, worrying glances at him out of the corner of his eye… he would be fine, as long as he could make it to seven…

 

* * *

 

    “Do I really need to sort out the cabinet during the detention?”

    Snape had caught him up as soon as the privacy spells were in place, pinching that spot on his neck that made his legs fall out and lifting him securely into his embrace. Harry would have felt odd about being hugged as soon as he was through the door, but when the depression fell away at first inhale he could only limply feel gratitude.

    “Yes, just in case someone comes looking for you. I'll have to put the detention in the log, after all. But you can try to use your magic wandlessly, as I suggested, to do it. Treat it as another lesson.”

    “What if I can't move anything?” He wanted to nuzzled in deeper, feel that soft hair in his hands again, and Snape seemed to intuit his inner struggle, releasing the pinch just after Harry's toes and fingers had started wiggling ineffectually. Immediately he brought his hands up to the man's nape and pulled Snape’s neck tighter against his face.

    “As long as you _try_ then it is still a good use of your time. If you can directly manipulate the raw energy of your magic to such an extent then you would be the only wizard in the entire world, in all history, who has accomplished it. I am not expecting such a miracle.”

    “I will try anyway,” Harry said in a soft, faraway voice, carding his hands through the professor's hair and breathing deeply of that scent — not quite letting himself sink to a drugged level of stupefaction, but enjoying the pleasing aroma anyway. Very, very male. How odd that he’d never suspected this sort of interest — interest in his own sex — before smelling Snape, even after presenting at Grimmauld. Snape’s hair was wonderful between his fingers; Harry thought the individual strands must be much thinner than his own, to feel so very soft like this. The man was lucky he had so _much_ hair, otherwise his scalp might have looked sparse, Harry thought nonsensically. Harry brought a strand to his nose, and hummed.

    “I take no pleasure in my role as your hated professor anymore,” Snape confessed suddenly, breaking through the misty clouds taking over Harry's mind.. “I cannot stomach it. I fear I will become only more obscene and hateful as it becomes harder and harder a mask to hold.”

    “You have to,” Harry said softly, letting his fingertips cross against the base of his mate's neck and press into his scalp as he dragged them up, holding Snape's head in place on his shoulder. “It is your life at stake.”

    “When we do _this_ , it is not _my_ life I am concerned with.” Snape gave a mirthless sort of laughter, his breath warming the skin of Harry's neck in a way that made him shudder, though he couldn't say what he might have done about it, had he the gumption. “If my old compatriots could see me now…”

    “I like you just fine the way you, are, thank you,” Harry said, waspishly. “Lucius Malfoy and company can go suck an egg.”

    Snape's nose ran along the column of his neck, apparently not bothered by Harry's tone. “If I could take this from you, I would.”

    Tears pricked Harry's eyes then, knowing Snape was referring to either his exile, or his place in the deadly tournament. That was as close to a declaration of love as Harry had ever received. It was made all the more powerful in that it was not motivated by some kind of passion. He knew that whatever Snape was feeling, it wasn't parental, but it wasn't infatuated either. Like Harry's feelings, it probably just _was_ , floating somewhere semi-platonically in the middle, avoiding all efforts he'd made to worriedly label it in his four-poster at night. Truthfully, Harry wished Snape _could_ take the Tournament and negative attention from him — but that’s not the way life — or magical contracts — worked.

    Snape's hand stroked his back until the tears ceased. The, without looking as Harry surreptitiously wiped his eyes, the man returned him to his feet.

    “Let's test your Occlumency shields again. With all the negative attention on you I did not feel it right to test you as I wished this past week.”

    “It might help me, actually. Occlumency doesn't help me control myself, but it does help me feel less alone. It reminds me we are a… well, a team... or whatever.”

    “We are. With more at stake than anyone else inside this school. We must work harder than anyone to protect each other. You can keep that firmly in mind when we are at each other's throats in class.”

    “You too,” Harry said fervently. “I’d er — rather not be left for dead after a cauldron explosion or something, but you _must_ treat me like the scum under your shoe in class. And in the halls. And —”

    “I get it, Potter. I _can_ extrapolate. I have much practice in doing things I detest, I can do this as well.”

    Harry didn't mention feeling that the mating bond was quite another hurdle to push through, altogether different from the other things the man had faced — whatever they were. Instead he held close the truth that Snape had just revealed, wittingly or not, he _detested_ treating Harry poorly. They were going just as mad as each other, it seemed... a linear fall; parallel.

    That brought Harry comfort.

    “Alright. First I will test your shields, then we shall move on if they are adequate enough. Maybe it's time for you to — _legilimens_!”

    Caught off guard, Harry saw a flash of Aunt Marge's dog Ripper chasing him up a tree before he _pushed_ and the office returned. Both of them remained on their feet afterwards.

    “Caught me off guard,” Harry said, but he couldn't stop the grin from blooming across his face. His mate had tried to be sneaky, but he’d been able to block it anyway.

    Snape stared at his smile for a moment, but spoke as if he wasn't as distracted as he appeared. “A little slow to push me out, I saw the dog. It's not instinctual yet.”

    “No, it’s not.”

    Without warning, Snape struck again, _“_ _Legilimens_!” but Harry was still Occluding and it made no effect. “Good. I will try harder now, see if you feel a difference. _Legilimens_!”

    At first Harry felt no change, but then as Snape began to narrow his eyes, Harry felt his magic bubble begin to _dent inwards._ He pushed back at the dent, and it moved away from where he'd sent extra magic and pushed in even harder in the new location. Realizing just like two weeks ago he'd have to protect the whole of his mind — faint images of chasing Cho on his broom flickered faintly across his view of the office — he pushed more uniformly, _out, out, push…_

    The dent smoothed out as he concentrated, and then after a moment, reformed. Snape was gritting his teeth now, and Harry concentrated harder, stumbling as he lost his grip on his physical body, and the dent slowly began to smooth itself again, his defences now extending further from his body than he thought was safe. Snape was _sweating_ , then, face entirely red as he clung onto his desk with his free hand, wand held aloft and the dent tunneled back in forcefully, desperately, and Harry thought there was no way he could stop it but he _must_ to earn Snape's respect, to keep earning the affection he'd just received...

    He fell to his knees but could not feel it, though his vision jolted in such a way he knew somewhere in the back of his mind that it _should_ hurt rather a lot. _Push,_ he ordered himself desperately, _push_ …

    Snape's wand fell out of his open, clawed hand to the floor and both of them abruptly burst into gasping breaths, the Professor seeming to keep to his feet only with sheer stubbornness and a helpful hold of his desk.

    “How'd I do?” Harry croaked, letting himself sink fully to the cold floor, pressing his sweaty back and neck to the cobblestones there in relief.

    “It is unreasonable,” the man panted. “Completely unexplainable.”

    “Ugh,” Harry groaned in response. “My head definitely hurts now. So, good, then?”

    “You _clearly_ do not understand, Potter! This should not be! I should not bear down on you with the entirety of my strength and have you _still_ come out the victor! If you had faltered — had you slipped on your control — your brains would likely be all over that floor you are laying on!”

    “Fuck,” Harry responded eloquently. “Was that wise, then?”

    “ _Twenty points from Gryffindor,_ watch your _mouth,_ Potter.”

    “Er — right, sorry.”

    “I shall have to tell the Headmaster. No doubt he will be _thrilled_ ; he's always gone on about how _engaging_ you are…”

    Harry rolled over, looking up at the Professor with a frown. “Sir…? Are — er — you… okay?”

    “ _No_ , Potter, I have a gigantic headache and _I've_ _just been bested in my own field of expertise by a blasted FOURTEEN year old_!”

    Harry pouted involuntarily — his eyes overflowing without his permission — so he sunk his head onto his arms to hide his embarrassing reaction from the Professor. After a few moments of Snape’s harsh breathing, he heard the man's footsteps pace over to a far wall and then back.

    “Here, Potter,” Snape said by his elbow, much more calm, then. “For your head.”

    A dim, blue potion in an unmarked bottle was pressed into his hand. He sat up and took it willingly, if a bit  _sadly_ , feeling his head come to rights afterward with every pounding heartbeat.

    “You often seem so much like your old, indomitable Gryffindor self that I forget entirely that you are an omega. You are so... _willfully independent_... in ways that no other omega of my acquaintance has ever made for themselves, that I forget there is a gentle heart inside you like any other, that needs its alpha to care after it. I am sorry for losing my head. I cannot promise it will not happen again, but I will try my best to remember the lesson of this moment and apologize at that time, too.”

    Harry leaned his head against the knee by his side, something inside him instinctively finding peace from the submissive position, and wiped his eyes. Snape's hand cautiously laid upon his head, and with that sign of approval Harry found it easy, then, to whisper, “Thank you.”

    “Pay what I said no mind, Potter. I am simply a prideful man, and you are accomplishing the impossible, after all.”

    “Well… _you_ said most witches and wizards can do a wandless spell or two. So far I can't do any, just 'push.'”

    “Yes, most can manage to stir their tea or Summon something, whispering the exact incantation in their minds... focusing extra hard on the results. What you are doing is more akin to harnessing the raw power directly… and there’s far more… _capacity_  to it than I thought possible for one your age. Before today, I would have thought no one in this school — other than Headmaster Dumbledore — could withstand my full weight behind that spell.”

    “You're that powerful?” Harry asked, looking up from the Professor's knee. The hand on his head combed through his hair lightly, and Harry choked back the urge to purr. He'd _very purposefully_ not made that noise yet, though he knew his airways had changed enough to allow it to happen.

    “Not _powerful_ so much as… determined. Disciplined. _You_ have not proven to have such a disciplined mind, Potter. Your progress is…”

    “' _Unreasonable?'_ ” Harry quoted, quirking up a grin at the man.

    “Quite,” he answered, tugging at his hair gently, perhaps even _fondly_. “Let's be done with Legilimency tonight. Instead, try to use that pushing feeling to move an inanimate object — hmm...  _globus._ ” He tapped his wand into his opposite palm and a plain wooden ball appeared there.

    “Do you just have a room full of stuff waiting for you to Summon it like that?” Harry asked curiously.

    Snape looked down at him, faint not-smile tugging at his mouth. “You have no idea how much better you just made me feel. It is only a simple conjuring spell, Potter. _Globus_ means 'ball’ or 'sphere’ in Latin.”

    “If I learn Latin can I make up spells too?”

    Snape rolled his eyes. “Pray, don't try. My ego can only take so much in one decade, and you have already swallowed up three-and-some years of this one already with your harebrained antics. For now, focus on this.”

    He handed down the ball and Harry eased away from the man's leg to set it down between his own crossed ones. “Any advice?” he asked as the Professor took a seat behind his desk.

    “Try first, and tell me where you find difficulty. For now, you are flying into the unknown.”

    “Hmm.”

    Harry regarded the innocuous little ball suspiciously. He sent out a test push of his magic and upon contact it promptly rolled away, out of his reach.

    “Try to call it back to you,” Snape said softly, as if not to break his concentration. Harry sent out his magic in pursuit, but stopped abruptly when the jars on the shelf next to him started tilting dangerously off balance.

    “Try to send out a smaller amount, the way you said you 'nudged’ my intrusion from your mind.”

    Harry obeyed, struggling with the task and feeling his control slip even _further_ over the magic the farther away it got from his body. Though he mentally gripped it harder and harder, the far end turned around and fought to come back to his body — distorting beyond his control as he attempted to force it beyond a certain point. Relaxing his hold, he called it back and it snapped back into him like a rubber band, sending him sliding across the floor half a meter. “It doesn't want to go that far,” he said, his breath coming in shakily.

    “Mmm… this is a spell you are set to learn next week, I believe, but you can use ' _accio'_ to summon objects back to you. _Accio sphere!_ ” The ball flew, smacking into Snape's hand, and then with a silent swish and flick, he sent it sailing back to Harry.

    “ _Accio_?” queried Harry, checking his pronunciation.

    “Correct.”

    Harry set the ball down and attempted to scoop the ball up with his magic, but he only ended up bumping it away again. He sighed, and cast _“Accio sphere_!” but the ball stayed stubbornly still. “ _Accio_!”

    The darn thing didn't even roll over. A muffled sort of snicker came from the direction of the wizard grading papers, and Harry glared at him.

    “Well?” he snapped. “Any hints?”

    “Yes, actually,” Snape drawled, turning in his chair to regard him like a king might his lowly subjects. “Magic needs _intent_ to know what to do with itself. Otherwise, you are just shouting out loud 'fetch!’ for no reason.”

    “Intent,” he said slowly. “I guess spells do tend to begin working for me when I get especially frustrated and _demand_ they work… let me try — _accio sphere!_ ” The ball jumped a short distance and thunked back down to the floor. The sphere continued to roll along the same trajectory, following the lines in the stone floor, and Harry snagged it up once it got close enough. “It worked!”

    “Almost,” Snape said, not letting him count it as a victory.

    Harry grunted and reapplied himself to attempting to grab hold of the ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, the next few chapters are going to be a wee bit exciting... taking a brief interlude away from focusing on canon events during an accident, a heat, and an attack.
> 
> Edit to add: this chapter and the next were originally one loonng chapter, and I cut them in half for easier digesting. *Pats belly* Just a heads up the next chapter starts exactly where this one leaves off.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magic manipulation practice goes wrong, and Snape has an unwelcome prediction that quickly comes true.

# Chapter Nine

* * *

* * *

    “I can't do it,” he cried, frustrated after what felt like the hundredth time _push_ ing and almost-Summoning the ball back and forth. “My magic just bumps it away, no matter how carefully I try to bend it in order to cup it, or scoop it back…”

    “You are able to manipulate it to that extent?”

    “It's not easy either, that's why this is so frustrating. It's _difficult_ to force it into a different shape than just a — a _blob_.”

    Snape sat quietly for a moment. “It is only a theory… but perhaps…” His fingers tapped upon the wood in front of him. “I don't not want to steer your mind down a fruitless path, but —maybeyou should try to work _with_ your magic, instead of forcing it to work for you.”

    “I don't understand the difference.”

    “There have been only a few times where Magic has done something completely unprompted by man or beast — the creation of alphas and omegas like you and me in the Dark Ages, for example. Some say prophecies are a result in Its meddling. No one has ever communed directly with anything like a _consciousness_ , but still there is a pervasive belief that somehow there _is_ some rational thought, floating around out there, making decisions to its own whim. Maybe it would behoove you to entreaty with your magic, and see if it responds better.”

    “You make it sound like… that it would be like talking to a god.”

    “I am not one who believes there is that much _mind_ to it. Perhaps it is just a particularly complicated bundle of protection magics that has never faded away properly, hovering over the surface of the Earth, sending out its power when it connects with a great feeling of need. Who can say? I am not a religious man, to speak any side passionately.”

    “Me neither,” Harry murmured, distracted by trying to feel what Snape had mentioned within him. He really only knew how to push _out_ , how could he connect deeper within his skin? He decided to start with what he knew, and gently _pushed_ towards the ball, trying not to mentally manhandle it, but more softly request the action he needed.

    “You did it,” Snape said, just barely audible in the stillness. Harry opened his eyes, as usual not _seeing_ his magic but sensing the way it stretched out in front of him, surrounding and filling the entirety of the ball as it hovered, gently wavering with the moving of his chest — his breath. Harry tried to keep that feeling of goodwill going as he called the magic back and tried to coax it to drop the ball into his hand.

    Only, the magic didn't give up it's prize. He tugged at it lightly with his hand, even, but it remained fast within his magic’s hold. Snape, still watching, stood and came over to examine Harry's difficulty.

    “It doesn't want to let go. I can feel it, all around the ball, even inside it.” Harry experimentally shook the extended magic and the ball waved at them accordingly, but was not flung free.

    “Try to recall your magic back.”

    Harry did as he requested, letting his magic snap back beneath his skin, and the ball hurtled towards him, still held by his magic. Within the blink of an eye the ball smacked into his chest, expelling a great burst of air as it slammed into him.

    “Sn-Sna—!” he begged with the very last air he'd retained, unable to even verbalize his mate's full name as his lungs felt smaller and emptier than he'd ever known they could be. The sphere continued to burrow into his sternum fiercely, his magic resolutely trying to become one with his body as Snape fell to his knees beside him.

    “ _EVANESCO_!” His mate cast frantically, and as the tip of his wand cracked against the ball in his panic, the sphere Vanished as if it had never been. Harry's magic, finally free, snapped back inside him, bouncing his middle into the floor as it did.

    Harry sucked in a deeply stridorous breath desperately, hacking and coughing as Snape gathered him up into a bridal carry.

    “We need to get you to the hospital wing —”

    “No —" Harry protested weakly. "You can't carry me through the school like this —”

    “I damn well will do what I —”

    Inspiration struck Harry through his adrenaline-enhanced panic.

    “ _Occlude, mate.”_

    Harry's voice rang with his own version of an alpha command — his ‘omega plea.’ After he’d presented and read up on what he had become, he'd figured out that was what had forced Snape to finally stop and listen in the Shack. Ron and Hermione had both mentioned how they were helpless to do anything other than hang on his every word after, and then when he became an omega and started to read Remus's gifted books, he'd stumbled across the description and _known_.

    Snape squeezed him tighter, but obeyed, even closing his eyes to do the thing properly. It was the first time he'd tried to make a _plea_ since accidentally doing so at the end of last term; he wondered if Snape could feel the power behind his demand similar to how he could feel the unending insistence of an alpha command — or whether he'd just obeyed without thinking about it, like instinctively falling to the ground when someone yells _‘duck!’_

    “You were right,” Snape said finally, back to rationality. “Thank you. I was out of control. Your heat must be coming soon... but in any case, here, stay out of sight while I Floo the Headmaster.”

    Snape gently set Harry behind his desk, out of view of the hearth. Uncomfortably unable to see, he heard Snape call out “Headmaster's Office!” and then the rush of the Floo seeking out the connection immediately after.

    “Ah, Severus, has Harry finished with his lesson already?”

    “May I speak plainly about the boy, Albus?” His tone was peeved, clearly ready to vent his feelings on 'awful Harry Potter.' Hand held lightly over his sternum, Harry smiled. He was back in control, alright.

    “Yes. No one is able to hear us; what is it?”

    “There's been an accident, he has been hurt. May we come through? He needs the hospital wing.” No anger in his voice then. Just urgency. Right back out of control, then.

    “Of course, come through immediately.”

    Harry was warmed by concern implied by the Headmaster’s worried tone, and pulled himself up. The ache in his chest had faded significantly and he wasn't so sure the Healer witch's help was necessary, but he knew better than to go up against an alpha when it came to caring for their injured mate — even his own.

    “You should have waited for me,” Snape said, scowling as he rushed to support Harry unnecessarily.

    “I'm fairly certain now that it is just a bruise.”

    “You are still going,” the Professor said firmly.

    “I know, I won't fuss.”

    “Headmaster's Office!”

    Harry pulled himself in tight against his mate during the very short ride through the fireplace. He had only just seen three fireplaces zoom past before they arrived and Snape was gently pushing him from the flames

    “There you are, Harry, are you quite alright?”

    “Yes, sir. A practice gone wrong. I still don't understand how it happened…”

    “Well, I'm sure Severus will tell me all about it when I get back from escorting you into Madam Pomfrey's tender care. Come along, then “

    “Have him stay overnight,” Snape said before they could leave. “I believe his first heat will be starting soon.”

    “Ah. That explains a few things,” the Headmaster said, twinkling his blue eyes in Snape's direction.

    The Professor sneered at his boss before turning away, and Professor Dumbledore strode for the doors exiting the office. “Let's not tarry,” he said, taking the steps quickly down, even as they rotated.

    “I'm sorry, I may not be able to — to keep —” Harry's chest hurt afresh as he half-jogged by the Headmaster's side. As old as he appeared to be, the tall man had a wide stride and every step he took forced Harry to take two to match him.

    “Ah, my apologies. I felt it was imperative to… give Professor Snape some fresh air.”

    “So my heat is really coming? I don't feel any different…”

    “I have never seen Severus so uncollected. I can only draw the conclusion that yes, your first heat is surely upon you.”

    “Oh.” Harry felt dread knotting in his stomach. From what he read, heats were not pleasant for unmated omegas. His stomach twisted again, and he placed a hand there. “Er… I've tried to ignore a stomachache all day, you might be right.”

    “Your body getting ready to purge itself,” said the Headmaster helpfully. “When the time comes, don't — ah, hold it in. Madam Pomfrey will likely give you a potion if you do, and trust me that is not an experience you wish for yourself.”

    Harry stifled a laugh at the comically nauseated look on the older man's face.

    “Here we are,” he said cheerfully, holding the hospital wing door open for Harry.

    “Thanks, sir.”

    “Mr. Potter! Don't tell me there's been another outrageous adventure…”

    Madam Pomfrey's voice was absolutely forbidding. “Just a small accident, Poppy. It is also suspected that the lad's first heat will be beginning in the next day as well.”

    Madam Pomfrey eyed the Headmaster suspiciously. “The only sign that a heat is on the horizon is _mild_ intestinal discomfort — unless the omega has found his mate and begun bonding.”

    “Please Poppy, not here,” the Headmaster said quietly.

    “Come with me, Mister Potter. What have you gotten yourself into tonight?”

    “I was hit in the chest very hard by a small wooden ball,” Harry said quickly, not wanting to attract the woman's ire.

    “Well, off with your robes, then let's see it,” the woman said imperiously, drawing privacy curtains around the bed she'd led them to with a wave of her wand.

    “I'll just step outside,” the Headmaster said lightly, disappearing back out into the open room.

    “Shirt too, Mr. Potter. Good gracious are those really _your_ clothes?”

    Harry flushed. Sirius had insisted on getting him a few new items of clothing over the summer but he preferred to save them for the weekends, to keep them looking new for as long as possible. Underneath robes whose voluminous bulk covered everything, he didn't mind wearing Dudley's cast offs because he didn't give a fig if  _they_ became more worn.

    Madam Pomfrey clucked her tongue at the swollen red splotch on his chest, and he noticed with interest that the center was already turning purple. “What in Merlin's name hit you _this_ hard, Potter? If I've heard you've been fighting in the halls, _this_ close to curfew…”

    “Practicing Summoning spells,” Harry said carefully. It wasn't even _really_ a lie. “It was truly an accident.”

    “I've never heard of such a thing in _all_ my days…” the witch murmured, casting a spell or two at his chest and then clucking her tongue some more. “No broken bones but that bruising goes _very_ deep.” She swish-and-flicked her wand and a pair of folded hospital pajamas floated over the top of the curtains and onto the bed. “Go ahead and get changed and onto the bed. I'll keep you overnight in case your heat begins — I _will_ talk to the Headmaster about how he knew about _that_ — positively indecent for a grown man to know the status of a child…”

    The woman continued muttering as she left him to change. As he waited for the both of them to come back he heard her muffled voice raising itself in ire, but couldn't make out the words — she must be talking with the Headmaster in her office, he realized. He didn't have to guess what she'd just been told; Dumbledore must have just told her the identity of his mate. He wanted to sneak up on them and listen, but a sudden surge _downwards_ in his bum erased that thought as he leapt off the bed and sprinted to the loo.

    It was, hands-down, the worst movement in the history of movements. Shaking, weak, sweaty and swallowing back the urge to vomit all over his socked feet, Harry pushed wave after wave of liquid _yuck_ out until all that escaped him were warm gushes of a translucent liquid that emerged cleaner and less yellowed with every cramping surge.

    When he’d been weakly passing completely clear liquid for several minutes, he finally felt his stomach settle. Weakly, he cleaned himself up and exited, embarrassed to see Dumbledore and Pomfrey chatting idly in chairs by his empty bed, drinking tea.

    “So it has begun then,” the witch said. “We will have to move you to a private room in that case. You know what to expect from the next three days?”

    “Yeah,” he responded glumly.

    She nodded sympathetically. “After this one and your body has settled we can get you started on the suppressants. I know it’s difficult, but it’s very important your body has gone through this at least once.”

    “I know, ma’am.”

    “Good. Now —” She cast a cautious look over at the Headmaster who folded his hands over his middle enigmatically. “The Headmaster has spoken with me regarding your mate and I feel I would not be worth my salt if I did not ask of you… was the accident tonight caused by him?”

    A furious growl escaped him before he could squash it, and his face heated in fresh embarrassment. “Er — no, it was all me, ma’am,” he said, trying to appear contrite.

    “Well,” she said dryly. “That initial reaction says quite a lot about how the connection between you two is progressing. The Headmaster has informed me of _‘his’_ determination to adhere to the laws regarding underage omegas but you have to understand, based on your combined history I _must_ ask if everything is going at a pace _you_ are comfortable with. I do not wish to speak ill of a teacher, however…”

    He nodded at her obvious discomfort. “Both of us were… taken aback, in the beginning. But we have come to an understanding.”

    “Oh, but dear… I still hear such upsetting rumors about how he treats you in class…”

    “Poppy, we have talked about this.”

    “It’s hard, especially for him,” Harry said slowly, but it seemed the alpha command to keep Snape’s secrets didn’t have a problem with that small confession, or... perhaps the key was who it was being said to. “— but I’ve insisted a few times that he keep up the pretense in public. It’s crucial for both of us.”

    Madam Pomfrey shook her head, but a small smile twisted her mouth to the side. “At least no one can accuse him of _favoring_ you. Alright, then, off to the room.”

    “Now that everything is settled, I shall return to my guest in my office. I’m sure he has become quite impatient by now…” the Headmaster said thoughtfully, drifting away.

    Madam Pomfrey showed Harry to a small side hall complete with plain wooden doors on either side. Interestingly enough, the stone and mortar for the walls and floor were a slightly different color than the rest of the castle.

    “This section was added a few hundred years after the creation of the school,” she said when he mentioned it. “Once secondary genders appeared, it quickly became obvious that a place to house heat-struck omegas was absolutely necessary. The records from those years show _so_ many accidental matings and injuries from alphas entering rut in the commons…” She shuddered.

    The room he was shown was marked with a number one on the door, and contained a bed, simple bathroom with shower, and a simple desk. The floor had a plain grey carpet laid down, but that was the extent of the decorating. The window showing a view of the grounds had sturdy bars on it, which reminded Harry unpleasantly of his room at the Dursleys'.

    “Er — do you think Professor Snape could come here?” he asked the Mediwitch distractedly.

    Her lips twisted in amusement. “I have a Bruise Balm for your chest and a general Wellness Potion that should help speed healing from the inside, and a bottle of Dreamless Sleep,” she said, ignoring his question. “You won't be able to take potions after tonight so I need you to drink every last drop of that Wellness Potion. I will, of course, wait here while you take all three.”

    He awkwardly smoothed the balm over his bruise, watching as it began to fade immediately. He was glad she hadn’t spread it on him herself, the thought of being touched by her in that moment made his skin prickle unpleasantly. The Wellness Potion didn’t taste too badly, but the Dreamless Sleep was uncomfortably thick and burned on the way down.

    “Mate...” he murmured as sleep dragged him under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I wrote a long thing over in Year One but then I felt 'this is too long, it's going to make people angry to scroll down and see this huge long thing when they thought they still had more chapter to read' so I'll just say I've had unusual good luck health-wise recently and I'm not dealing with it well mentally, therefore the delay. I've been sick for a very long time with no apparent cause, to find the answer and start feeling better has been terrifying. I don't know myself anymore, every process feels different. Thanks for the patience.
> 
> A note about the school uniform, I'm going along with the books which does not have the shirt/pants/tie combo. Harry wears his normal (Dursley or Sirius-given) clothes under an all-one-piece muumuu deal XD
> 
> If you are familiar with A/B/O fics then you can probably tell from this chapter that there are already certain things which set my universe's heat apart from others. There are certain things which I really like about A/O heat sharing... self-lubrication, natural loosening of the sphincter, ... *blush* ... rimming........ but I cannot completely relax into the idea of free-for-all sex during this time because I'm unable to separate the idea that it is a completely unprepared back passage they're working with. That surprise heat and near-immediate rimming? Yeah that's a poo-filled slurry. I cannot forget that. So I fixed it in mine. :) There's another big difference next chapter. And a few little ones.
> 
> (So no one is misled by that last explanation about sex: remember he is fourteen and there wont be underage (<17) sex in this fic series. He *is* fourteen though, and curious about his changing body so.............)


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A heat and a threat.

# Chapter Ten

    When he awoke, it was to a body determined to contradict itself. At first, he was warm and comfortable in the bed... eager to sink back into sleep some more. Then, as he became more aware of his surroundings, he felt the beginnings of a bone-deep cold and restlessness that had him rolling out of bed onto the floor. He shivered once he was out of the safety of his covers, and realized as fresh air touched his pajamas that he’d sweated right through them. In the air, he smelled the faintest hint of Snape, and he feverishly searched all corners of the room for the origin until he realized it was coming from his _own skin_... from his hands and places on his neck and cheek that had touched the man the night before. He pressed his face into his palms and inhaled deeply. Normally he wasn’t able to smell the impression his mate left on him; now the other man’s scent practically _sang_ off his skin.

    “Good morning, Mr. Potter,” he heard after a moment of panting uselessly, not feeling any closer to catching his breath. He turned his head, but the room was still empty and the door still shut. “I left three changes of clothing on the desk, and your breakfast will be along shortly. The bathroom is well-stocked with sanitary napkins and disposable underwear, please feel free to make use of them as you need.”

    “I need to go for a walk,” he said, somewhat desperately. “Just for a few minutes. I need out.”

    “I know, Mr. Potter. As soon as your heat ends you will be allowed to leave, but until then you must stay here. I have requested your books and classwork to be sent here, so you should have something to occupy your time soon. Don’t forget to tend to your hygiene, showering and such.”

    “No, can’t shower.”

    “And why on earth not?”

    “Will you have Snape come down here?”

    “ _Professor_ Snape, and no, I cannot. Why can’t you shower, Mr. Potter?”

    Harry didn’t answer.

    “Mr. Potter?”

    “My hands smell like him,” he finally mumbled.

    “Oh, for —” the matron exclaimed. “ _Shower_ , Mr Potter.”

    Harry didn’t say anything and eventually he heard a sigh and she bustled away.

    His breakfast was a small plate with very small cuts of raw fruit and veg on it. It came with a note that said: ‘ _eat_ one _piece at a time and chew_ thoroughly _before swallowing — M. Pomfrey._ ’ He only changed into the provided disposable briefs and clumsily placed a pad over the part that covered his bum when he dirtied his boxers with the fluid — called ‘slick,’ he recalled — leaking unstoppably from his anus.

    And _that_ was a problem too. His backside was swollen and loose, trying to clench and keep the fluid in was a fool's errand. He _knew_ why, too, just as he knew the exact reason why he kept pacing aimlessly and testing the strength of the locking charm over the door and calling out to Madam Pomfrey to let him take a run around the grounds. Classwork and essays couldn’t distract him for long, not when his legs would spasm and prickle with the _need to go_ whenever he sat down _._

    Even that — he knew _exactly_ who he wanted to go see. _'Snape, Snape, Snape,'_ swirled around his head nonstop like a mantra. His backside ached in a way that didn't feel _good,_ but wasn’t painful and he knew the only one who could make it stop was his acerbic more-than-twice-his-age professor. In those moments when he had to sit on his hands to prevent himself from trying the door handle _one more time,_ he tried to remind himself that he was only fourteen, that he was enrolled in a deadly tournament, that he was _not_ _ready_ for what his body tempted him to seek out, but the craving to see the man and submit to whatever Snape wanted to do with him persisted nonetheless.

    He was just thankful that there wasn’t an _arousal_ aspect on top of the compulsion to seek out — well. The books said that there wouldn't be, but it seemed everyone who wasn’t an omega seemed to think they lost their minds entirely to the thought of seeking pleasure itself, and Harry was immensely relieved that was not the case. He wasn’t _hard_ , he didn’t have a mindless urge to orgasm, didn’t suffer through intrusive fantasies, he just wanted to _find Snape._ Snape would know what to do, Snape could warm him properly, Snape _was safe._ Snape could give him babies.

    He shivered.

    “Mr Potter, have you showered yet?” Pomfrey asked some time on the second day.

    Harry whimpered. Despite his best efforts to guard against it, his mate’s scent was fading from his hands and he felt more restless than ever. “No. Can't.”

    The woman sighed. “Alright, Potter. Wait a few moments, I’ll see what I can do.”

    Harry was non-seriously contemplating strangling himself with the bed sheets later that day when out of thin air appeared a neatly-folded burgundy pajama shirt and his marked-up Potions homework on the very surface he was scrutinizing.

    He blinked, but then that wonderful, amazing, _familiar_ smell of his mate flooded his senses and he snatched up the fabric and pressed it against his face in delight, homework falling aside. He purred, that foreign noise he’d diligently suppressed during the last three months finally breaking free.

    “I’m guessing that helps, then?” Madam Pomfrey’s sardonic voice called through the door. Harry didn’t stop purring, though, and her shoe impatiently tapping sounded then. “Take a shower, now, Potter,” she demanded. “If you haven’t gotten in that stall in the next five minutes I will have the house elves take back that shirt!”

    Harry growled, but obeyed. The shirt had eased the adrenalin-laced urge to _go_ quite a lot and he would do a lot of things to prevent it from being taken away again.

    When he was clean, he paused before getting out of the stall. If everything went according to plan, this would be his only heat until he was ready to share it with his mate, years and years down the line. He was a suitably hormonal teenage boy, and naked... in the shower… with his body telling him all sorts of interesting things, and he contemplated… feeling around down there. One day it would be a busy place — he should not be left completely in the dark... right?

    And so after nervously stroking himself into partial interest, he sat right there on the wet floor and braced his feet on the opposite wall. The shower was purely functional — small and square, so his knees bent up helpfully as he sat scrunched so that his bum was tilted forward.

    He laid his hands on his thighs first, nervous to venture further. “This it's normal, I can do this,” he said out loud. Sitting made him want to run again so he began stroking his softening length again, mostly as a distraction. “It's clean, it's fine,” he encouraged again, as he dipped the fingers of his left hand down past his damp bollocks, his perineum, and into the even wetter cleft below.

    Entirely unexpected, there was a sensitivity to the skin before he'd even made it to the hole. It tickled as his fingers brushed through that unexplored valley, then as he tugged on his length again, the tickling felt a little more _interesting._ That discovery made him feel even more nervous, but also excited. He felt like he was in the cusp of some kind of sexual milestone, like wanking for the first time or getting his first blow job — not that he knew what the latter option would be like — and his fingers slipped further in to find that slackened hole with greater optimism.

    And — wow. He forewent stroking himself in order to properly absorb the sensation of gently running his fingers around the inner edge of his arsehole. It was different. Very, very different. His fingertip was wet with slick then, and he bravely tested the _middle_ … inwards just a bit — _oh._  His wish to find Snape doubled. There was something about that… about the way his body reacted to the tip of his middle finger dipping in and coming back out, then, feeling absolutely naughty he slid it back in... and then testing the idea of rubbing the side a bit on the way out… _Merlin._

    He wanted this now. He wasn't scared, no, he'd take anything his mate could give him if only it would be just like this but _more._ Following that sharp uptick of desire he pressed his finger in and in, slick easing the way until the solid row of his knuckles pressed against his cleft on either side of where his finger had disappeared. That slow slide in had been… Harry thought he'd felt it _everywhere_ , even in his teeth, it was so… everything.

    He pulled his finger back out, and had to press his feet into the wall, so disorienting a feeling of loss and need the retraction caused. But then his finger got to slide back in — oh, so slowly to experience every millimeter — and that was good. Harry lost his head a bit as he kept up that same pace, falling in love with his body and the feelings it allowed him to have like this, gradually giving in to the desire for more and slipping in a second finger, nearly kneeing himself in the face as the feelings tripled with the addition, with the slight _stretch_ that felt like tongues of fiery pleasure burst into being where he pulled at the ring of muscle right there at the entrance.

    Before no time at all after that discovery he stroked himself with abandon, tugging his rim and shoving fingers deep inside, as fast and firmly as he dared and then he was _coming_ , gritting his teeth against any noise, and trying to avoid pointing his erection at his face as spurts of watery, clear spunk flew up at him.

    The moment after his orgasm finished was filled with devastation. All pleasure was erased as deep sorrow weighed him more firmly into the wet tiles than his snapping magic could ever have done. _‘What have I done?’_ echoed painfully through his mind. _‘Nothing is well without my mate,’_ he heard as well. Outwardly, he went from moaning in completion to sobbing in the block of an eye.

    “Mate, mate,” he chanted pitifully, shame suffusing him to the point that he didn't feel he ought to live anymore. His gloppy hands — one covered in slick, the other in semen — curled guiltily around their messes, and his anus continued to pulse the way it should only have done around his mate's knot. He could not — _would_ not — wipe the tears from his face with his hands the way they were, so he let them trickle down, wanting to rock back and forth in his agony but not wanting even the bare floor to touch his empty rear.

    “Mr. Potter.” Madam Pomfrey's gentle voice floated through the closed doors of the room, bathroom, and shower stall easily. “When your body has stopped trying to lock the tie, please clean yourself up and talk with me. Your mate's shirt will help you calm down.”

    Harry shrunk in on himself more, embarrassed that his experimentation had been so public. His books hadn't mentioned feeling like this. If they had, he never would have touched himself for the whole of his heat. He sniffled. Was this what Snape had meant when he said he'd be more miserable since they'd started to bond already? Why didn't it mention this in his books? Surely he wasn't the only mated, bonded, unclaimed omega who would have liked to have known!

    His second shower was quick, for all he moved slowly in his poor mood. He started crying afresh as he rinsed his behind — still clenching, trying to stimulate more from the bulbous glandis that wasn’t there.

    He huddled on the bed when he called it to Pomfrey, in his pajama pants and wearing his mate's shirt instead of just making do with cuddling it. It was a long shirt even for an adult and on Harry's small frame fell to just above his knees. It soothed him a great deal, helping him feel like he was covered from head to toe by his mate's potent scent.

    “Alright, Mr. Potter, I'm back. I should let you know we weren't sure if the bond had fully established yet. Perhaps we should have warned you not to... well, it's done now. what you experienced afterward is a very simple chemical reaction. Whatever you felt or thought about yourself immediately after has no basis in truth. It is just an instinctive way your body ensures that you keep yourself all to your mate during your fertile period.

    “You are not alone in feeling this way; I give this same speech few times a year. Your mate does not think any differently about you, or for you. It will be best for you if you can put the reaction out of your mind as thoroughly as you can and look forward to continue building your _friendship_ the same way you had been. _Your_ mate specifically will not be comfortable discussing this topic until you’re older. That is, the topic of your, ah, _physical_ needs.”

    “I’d feel a lot better if I could go make sure it was okay myself,” Harry said in a quiet voice.

    Madam Pomfrey sighed. “ _No_ , Mr. Potter.”

    “Okay, then just a quick walk. I won't go see him, I _promise_!”

    “ _No_ , Mr. Potter!”

    “But I really _need_ to go, surely just a minute or two… Madam Pomfrey? Hello?”

 

* * *

 

    When he was finally permitted to leave the room on Tuesday morning, a fresh set of school robes on, pockets full of pads for his upcoming — ugh — _period_ and ready to fill his starving stomach with something more substantial than tiny bites of watery fruit. To his surprise, Hermione was waiting for him at the entrance to the wing, smiling worriedly and clutching her schoolbooks to her chest.

    “How are you feeling, Harry?” she asked as soon as she saw him.

    “Hungry,” he said, smiling a bit.

    “You look a bit tired,” she said cautiously.

    “I had trouble sleeping after the first day. Pomfrey said she couldn’t give me too many potions because of —” He cut himself off, not wanting to talk to Hermione about the effect drinking potions might have on his magically-plugged-up intestines.

    “I can only imagine,” the witch said sympathetically. “Are you going to be able to attend classes today?”

    “Should be good.” As they entered the Great Hall, his eyes instantly sought out the pale face of his mate, and a moment later Snape looked up at him as well. Harry gave a tiny nod to show everything was still fine, and Snape’s shoulders eased before the man looked away as if they had not had any interaction at all.

 

* * *

 

    When Friday rolled around he did fairly well with the Summoning charm in Flitwick’s class — Harry just neglected to mention it was because he already had nearly two hours of practice in Snape’s office. Objects still had an annoying tendency to drop in midair, unlike Hermione’s attempts which all zoomed perfectly to her hand. In his other classes, however he did _dreadfully,_ concentration in ruins due to how poorly he was regarded by everyone except for Hermione.

    Still feeling rather _fragile_ after spending his heat alone, even with his new regimen of suppressants, he was particularly ready to snap when he went down to Potions and found a crowd of Slytherins hovering outside the classroom.

    “Like them, Potter?” Malfoy called out, tapping the edge of a huge badge on his chest. Lit-from-within red letters spelled out “SUPPORT **CEDRIC DIGGORY** — THE **REAL** HOGWARTS CHAMPION!”

    “And this isn’t all they do — look!”

    With the flat of his hand he pushed on the face of the thing and when it as revealed again it was glowing green, instead. “ **POTTER STINKS** ,” the new message read.

    The other Slytherins roared with laughter and activated their own badges until in front of him was a sea of glowing green.

    Harry rolled his eyes and Hermione sarcastically commented on their wits as Harry moved to enter the classroom. He had just enough time to meet Snape’s eyes — the Professor was pacing, and Harry's middle squirmed at the thought that Snape might be impatient to see _him_ for the first time since going through his heat — when a hand on the back of his robes roughly yanked him back out into the hall.

    “I’m not through with you _yet,_  Potter,” Malfoy snapped, pushing his face up close to Harry’s and sniffing loudly. “Went through your first heat, did you? And no smell of blood yet… well you’re ripe for the plucking then. Did you know omegas are still fertile a few days after the end of their heat? Watch your back, _bitch —”_

    With a loud growl, Harry _pushed_ and sent Malfoy flying against the far wall. Wiping his mouth with a look of disgust, Malfoy rose, wand in hand.

    “ _Harry_!” Hermione whispered, tugging his arm, “Let it go, just come on…”

    “ _Densaugeo!_ ” Malfoy yelled. Harry dodged out of the way of the spell, but Hermione, who was still clinging tightly, fell with him directly into the path of the spell instead.

    “ _What is the meaning of this?_ ” Snape growled from the doorway, fists clenched and glaring around indiscriminately.

    “Potter attacked me, sir —”

    “You threatened me!” Harry argued.

    Hermione whimpered then, sounding so much like an omega that Harry briefly wondered if the spell Malfoy had cast had forced _her_ to present, only she was clutching her mouth, not her stomach. Peeking out from beneath her hands, her front teeth were growing even larger, steadily lengthening down her chin and past it.

    “Hospital wing, Granger. And fifty points from Gryffindor and a detention for Potter.”

    Harry gasped — even for the sake of appearing like enemies that was too far; he had just been threatened with _rape_ for Merlin’s sake! His glare wasn’t at all fabricated as Hermione ran away in tears and the Professor stared back at him with a single raised eyebrow. Knowing there was no point in opening his mouth again, he spun on his foot and stormed into the classroom.

    “Antidotes!” Snape said — rather viciously, Harry thought — after they had all gotten seated. “You should all have prepared your recipes now. I want you to brew them carefully, and then, we will be selecting someone on whom to test…” The Professor’s eyes came to rest on him, and the Slytherin side of the class erupted in titters as they realized exactly who he was insinuating to poison.

    Harry glowered, but internally he _knew_ he could brew a perfect antidote. He knew this, because of the homework that had been delivered directly to his room in the hospital along with the pajama shirt... the homework covered in scathing red _instructions_.

    His mate had known his syllabus ahead of time, and had given him what he needed to protect himself.

    The rest of his authentic anger oozed out of him then — though injustice still churned in his gut — but he _understood_ it now, at least. They had a role to play, and even though fifty points was far too much in his mind, maybe it wasn’t to Snape, who Harry was very, _very_ slowly learning to trust.

    Unfortunately, he couldn’t make his mate proud by surviving that day because Colin Creevey chose that moment to enter the classroom and request Harry to go take photos with the other champions. Harry couldn’t help but wince — the apparently-massively-jealous Ron had heard him say that and everything. Snape scowled, but was forced to let him go.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Malfoy tries to live up to his threat.

# Chapter Eleven

    He was on the way to Snape’s office after dinner when he was attacked.

    He was preoccupied — with thoughts of his heat and whether he betrayed his mate by touching what his instincts had insisted was _Snape’s_ , with the unsettling way Potions had played out, with Rita crowding him into a broom closet and somehow extracting something out of the nothing he had given her — though he didn't know what she'd seen and written. He was nervous, he felt like so much had happened to him without checking back in with Snape... or maybe he just felt that way because they hadn’t spoken since his rather momentous heat.

    It came from behind, so he didn’t see who it was as his neck was pinched — making fight impossible — and he was slammed into a wall face-first without regard for the structure of his nose or glasses.

    “Did you know we’re the only unmated alpha and omega in the school at the moment?” a familiar voice said hatefully into his ear. “So why is there no bond? You should be _mine_ . So _precious,_ Potter, that even _Magic_ has decided I’m not good enough for you?”

    “Ma-hoy — _wha_?” Harry slurred. His fingers and toes were the only parts of his limbs that he could move with that hand on his neck. It was not as gentle and precise a pressure as Snape used. Harry _hurt_ from hairline to shoulders from the ruthless grip and the rest of his body felt the strain too, like his tendons had been yanked into position _for_ him. “Leh’ me go!”

    “Scared, Potter? You should be. _I’m_ your master now. Your _mate._ You’ll be under my control, at my beck-and-call, _forever_.”

    Harry’s shield was pushed down hard into his neck then, as his fingers clenched and stretched, the back of his knuckles trying to make purchase on the wall —

    Then, there was a muffled spitting noise behind him as the pressure at the side of his neck abruptly ceased. “A _shield_?”

    “You _bi’ me_?” Malfoy had tried to _bite his mating gland_! Recovering his scattered wits, Harry _pushed_ and sent the blond flying for the second time that day. He spun, back to the wall still too freaked out to run. “Malfoy, _what the FUCK_!”

    “Shut up, Potter... Moody isn't here to save you this time... you’re _mine —_ do you hear me? _Diffindo_!”

    The spell went right through his magic which he’d left stretched out to hold Malfoy off. The alpha had held nothing back in powering the spell and Harry couldn't stop the scream ripping apart his throat as it successfully cut through his robes _and_ the straps holding his shield down, and even further, deep into the skin of his chest and shoulder — searing, etching, _slicing_. With his concentration shattered, his magic snapped back into his body, whacking his head against the wall again, and then Malfoy was on him, evading his weakly blocking arms in order to pinch the back of his neck, and then he could only lay, helpless, as the alpha knelt over him and with his free hand shoved his torn robes and strap-less shield aside —

    A loud growling roar echoed through the hall. “ _RELASHIO_!”

    Malfoy was flung back a step, hands forcibly flying out to the side and releasing his hold on Harry. He turned in horror at the enraged spectre of his head of house bearing down on him.

    “Professor, why are you —”

    “You _dare…_ you _DARE —”_

    “Snape — you can’t!” protested Harry frantically. He held his shaking hands over the large cut on his chest knowing that he needed to push on it to stop the blood flow, but the fear of even _more_ pain was so great he was unable to make himself do so. He couldn’t even bring himself to lightly graze the area, let alone do what was necessary even if it could have saved his life. Snape, looking down at the red-soaked vision he made — his face twisted upwards in helpless pain and the blood pulsing from his chest — seemed to swell with fury anew, turning back towards Malfoy.

    “You arrogant, festering little pustule... I have put up with you for far too long — hoping to preserve your innocence… kowtowing to your schoolboy bullying — but this time —” Snape laughed darkly, wand still pointed at Malfoy’s terrified face. “This time you’ve gone too far — there are some crimes which _any_ alpha cannot forgive, no…”

    Malfoy whimpered and skittered backwards on his hands, no trace of the vainglorious bully surviving on his face now that he was no longer in control. “ _Impedimenta_!” Malfoy’s backwards movement slowed almost to a stop, and his eyes began to gradually widen as he realized no matter how hard he tried, he would not be able to get away fast enough to make a difference.

    “ _Expecto Patronum_! Tell the Headmaster he is needed immediately in the dungeon corridor. Go!” A beautiful, silvery doe sprinted away, ignoring both floor and wall as she flew up and away in a straight line.

    Snape was growling unceasingly without seeming to take breath, glaring down the crab-walking Slytherin at his feet.

    “In a fair bit of pain here,” Harry wheezed frustratedly, pressing his head back against the wall as another wave of searing pain slashed across the stripe over his chest and shoulder.

    “Have to protect,” Snape ground out.

    “ _He’s_ down! _I_ need you now!” Harry snapped. The Professor wavered, fingering his wand as he sent Malfoy another venomous baring of teeth, then turned away sharply and sped to Harry’s side. Another set of growls rumbled from the man as he gently hovered his hands over the torn collarbone, but like Harry he did not touch.

    “It was just the Severing Charm,” Harry groaned out helpfully. “Not any sort of Dark spell.”

    “This still needs Wiggenweld, at least,” Snape murmured tightly. Harry recalled learning about the strong healing potion when he was eleven. Funny, how a wound of this size could be cured by something he'd learned so early in his studies... Harry wished he'd paid more attention to how to make it himself, as he lay there needing it and not remembering a single ingredient.

    “Have the first years made it yet?” Harry asked, clutching at Snape’s hand with his bloody one. The contact was not enough to calm him, but all he could manage. He couldn’t smell his mate from this distance with the suppressants plugging his nose.

    “I am not giving you a _first year’s_ work, Potter!” snarled Snape. “You will _only_ be given _mine_!”

    Dumbledore’s voice called down from the top of the staircase. “Severus!”

    “Here, Albus!”

    The Headmaster hurried down the spiral steps, peering with worried eyes over the railing at them every time he was on their side of the staircase as he bolted down. “Harry — and Mister Malfoy? What has _happened_ here?”

    His dismay and anger were clearly displayed on his face as he noted Harry’s cut-apart shield straps, slashed, bleeding skin, and Malfoy, pristine except for his red-smeared fingers, still slowly attempting to escape, just barely beginning to push up off his hands and knees. Then, he rushed over to crouch near Harry, fear and concern on his face as he examined Harry's neck where the exposed skin covering his mating gland was.

    “My boy — did he succeed?”

    “No, Snape stopped him in time.”

    Snape let out a shaky breath, head falling and fingers clenching over Harry's in a way that would have been painful if his full attention was not taken up by his wound. Harry had thought it was obvious, the way he was still clinging to Snape that the bond was intact, but perhaps not.  Dumbledore nodded, his own relief apparent.

    “Severus, take him to your office to get him patched up. I think… in these circumstances the less anyone knows about what occurred, the better.”

    “He undoubtedly has figured things out by now,” Snape said seriously.

    “I will take care of it. I am sorry, but in this case, justice cannot be served.”

    “What else is new?”

    Harry followed along the conversation confusedly, though he thought he might understand the rough bitterness in his mate’s voice at the end. Just like when he was a schoolboy and his father and Sirius were not expelled when Snape could have died at the teeth of werewolf Moony, it seemed like Malfoy would not be given his just desserts now, either.

    “He deserves to be expelled,” Harry said angrily.

    “We must Obliviate him, my dear boy,” the headmaster said in a soothing tone. “It is imperative he does not remember your mate coming so vigorously to your rescue.”

    “He _planned_ this. He was going to _claim and rape_ me,” Harry argued. “He cannot be allowed to roam free!”

    A growl so loud that it hurt Harry's ears burst from his mate then. “Albus you better take him away now or so help me —”

    “Yes, I see that. In that case… that it wasn't a — a mutual duel, that is… altogether a different matter… Harry, you are _certain_?”

    “He threatened me this afternoon. Said I could still be _fertile_ and to ‘watch my back.’ Then tonight, he attacks me _from behind_ , tells me his plan to claim me _himself,_ and then tries to _bite_ my mating gland!”

    “At what point did you arrive on the scene, Severus?”

    “I heard shouting and left my office to see what was happening, then followed Harry's scream to see _Malfoy_ on top of him, _pawing at his robes —”_ Snape broke off with a snarl. “I swear, Albus —”

    “One more — I _must_ know to tell it right — his robes, was he pulling up the bottom or…?”

    “Just my shoulder, to get to my gland,” Harry said reluctantly. He didn't want the Headmaster to change his mind and talk about letting Malfoy off again.

    “Still a grievous crime, child,” Dumbledore said softly. “I think… with a well placed Memory Charm and a suggestion that he'd been stupefied…”

    “The Dark Lord and his followers can easily break through a Memory Charm with enough persistence,” Snape said darkly.

    “Yes, well,” the Headmaster sighed, “— it will be hard for Tom to get to him in Azkaban.”

    Harry clenched Snape's hand and his eyes shut. _Azkaban!_ But Malfoy deserved it… he nearly stole his future with his mate from him. He would not be fourteen forever, and spending three days insensibly longing to get pregnant — by Snape, only ever by Snape — had gone a long way to helping him feel more comfortable with the thought of one day bearing children. Big nosed, apparently-not-greasy haired children. His stupid omega heart practically burst at the idea. He now knew he would want that, and Malfoy had almost _stolen_ it for himself. He shuddered at the thought.

    “Let me take care of my mate. You know what to do, Albus.”

    “Yes, sadly... I do. The Aurors will no doubt wish to speak with you when they arrive, Harry. Please report to them that I came upon the scene and silently cast a spell on Mr. Malfoy that made him fall asleep. As you no doubt recall, _stupefy_ is red.”

    “Yes, sir,” Harry said, wishing more than anything to get away from the blond who was slowly turning his head to look at them, aghast, as they plotted against him.

    “ _Mobilicorpus_ ,” intoned Snape, and Harry jerked as he was smoothly lifted by the spell, sending a fresh wave of fire through his wound. It was bleeding slower at that point, and as he looked, he noticed there was only a small smear upon the floor where he'd sat. With how much it hurt and how big it was he felt like it should have been larger — a puddle.

    “With our new plans, to the hospital wing, Severus.”

    A short, protesting growl emerged, but the professor strangled it off, steadying Harry with his hand and snapping out “ _Accio Severus’ Wiggenweld Potion_!”

    A vivid green potion zoomed down the hallway a few seconds later, smacked into his hand, and then his wand came back over to control Harry’s levitation again.

    “You said my first name again,” Harry said, voice strained as he tried to relax into the grip of the spell. He couldn’t quite get over the fear of falling, causing him to tense and his wound to stretch open.

    “I would never have expected myself to be the one who has the hardest time keeping our secret,” he said, self-loathing painfully evident in his voice.

    “Alphas are very active caretakers, Severus,” Albus said consolingly. “It is a miracle you can treat him as you always had at all. An omega’s natural role is quite passive, meant to receive and protect their _children_. If it were your babe at risk, no doubt Harry would not be as composed as you.”

    Harry’s face flushed red as he met Snape’s eyes awkwardly and then quickly looked away. Unfortunately that put the floating, unconscious form of Malfoy within his view, so he snapped his head back up towards the ceiling instead.

    A warm hand laid upon his healthy shoulder. “At ease, Potter.”

    Harry cautiously lifted his hand to cover the Professor’s, relieved to find that he could move his unaffected arm without fear and restore some connection with the man.

    “Oh, my! Not _again_! ” Madam Pomfrey lamented as they entered her domain. “And Mr. Malfoy? What did I say last week about fighting, Mr. Potter?”

    “Poppy, please, Mr. Potter has just been attacked. This is a very serious incident,” Dumbledore said. One would never have known the Headmaster had assumed the very same thing just five minutes ago, Harry thought sourly as Snape choked of another growl.

    “I am out of control,” the Professor complained under his breath.

    “Of _course_ you are, your mate is a _mess_! Come, bring him to a bed, I will just fetch —”

    “I have a phial here, Poppy,” Snape interrupted. “Wiggenweld, from my own stores.”

    “Yes, of course — from your own hand would be —”

    Harry let out an involuntary grunt of pain as he was settled onto one of the beds. In short order spells Severed and Banished the torn robe and shirt from his body to a pile in the corner, and _tergeo_ had the blood siphoning away from his skin.

    “Let’s clean the wound first,” Pomfrey said softly, silently summoning a purple potion which she poured directly over the wound, causing it to smoke and bubble fierce enough that Harry grit his teeth against a scream, and tears leaked out as he clenched his eyes.

    “Now, Harry, drink,” the witch urged, holding the bright green potion to his lips. Catching Snape’s intense eyes — feeling it was only right to look to his mate as he swallowed his potion — he gulped it down, ignoring the sugared-bile taste and fluttering his lashes in pure relief when the pain swiftly receded.

    “Well done,” Snape said as the bottle was removed, leaning forward to stroke a hand through his sweaty hair, his throat convulsing as if Snape had to work hard to hold back other endearments.

    “Good stuff,” Harry said, feeling energized already. He looked down and saw his wound as it finished closing, though a concave scar was left behind.

    “Essence of dittany will fade the scar,” Snape said softly.

    “I’ve got so many, what’s one more?” Harry said, though honestly he hated the sight of it. The pain-filled comment really drove home how much his sense of smell had diminished after taking the suppressants. Frustratingly, he felt another hot tear slide down his cheek.

    “I will get the dittany now,” Snape said immediately, recoiling from the tear as if it could kill him directly.

    “No, it’s not that,” Harry said, reaching out a hand to stop him. “I was just thinking that I miss being able to scent you as easily. If I wasn’t on the suppressants, I would never have said that. I would have been less… tired.”

    “It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to want to be treated well, and angry when it doesn’t happen.” Snape picked up his hand, and with the other, traced along the scars he’d collected over the years — scratches from trimming hedges far younger than he should have been made to, from Figg’s cats, burns from cooking breakfast before he was strong enough to lift the pan properly, and the wider scrape-shaped scars on his elbow he’d gotten after falling on the pavement, running from Dudley’s gang.

    Harry didn’t know where Snape’s own scars were, but perhaps there were many hidden under his conservative robes. “We are the same,” Harry said softly, harkening back to the beginning of the school year, during their very first ‘sharing secrets’ meeting when he’d seen child-Snape’s bruised face.

    But Snape was still stuck on Malfoy, and who he’d compared him to, months ago.

    “Your father would not have attempted to —” Snape could not finish.

    “Maybe. My godfather _did_ try to send you to your death, though. No mates when you're dead, either.”

    “Aren’t you supposed to take his side?” That not-smile played around his lips.

    “I’ll take both.”

    “Hmm,” a sour look graced the man’s face then, and Harry tugged his hand. “Hmm?”

    “Thank you for saving me.”

    Snape’s hand went to his hair again, petting softly. “There was no other option.”

    Dumbledore spoke as he entered their curtained off sanctuary. “Still, your quick actions tonight have saved Harry and yourself a lifetime of pain. I thank you as well, Severus. I should not have liked to see what would have come to be if you hadn’t been there.”

    Snape’s hands had jerked away from Harry as soon as the Headmaster had begun speaking, and he jabbed his wand at the floor after, silently casting the spell that made buzzing sound in his ears for a second before clearing. “Is it done?” he asked Dumbledore sharply.

    Dumbledore conjured a chair and sat on the other side of the bed from Snape. “His memory has been adjusted, and I have tested its efficacy; it should hold. I have questioned him and he has proven… recalcitrant, without his father. I have called the Aurors, and his family, in that order.” He paused, looking to Snape carefully. “For our testimony’s sake, you must leave Harry’s side before they arrive.”

    “And if our cover is blown? How will I know?”

    “Hmm… I shall mention missing the excitement of Quidditch matches. That works for Harry or I to say, though for you —”

    “I am confident in my ability to sound appropriately sarcastic.”

    “Ah, yes, that does fit. I’ll just give you two a moment to say goodnight, then.”

    Dumbledore popped up and strode out without a second glance — and his hurry reminded Harry that the Aurors were surely due any minute.

    “Are you feeling well enough to sit up?” Snape asked quietly. As an answer, Harry proved that he could, and felt himself blushing as Snape bent close to him so they could properly scent each other before he had to go. He was reminded of his amorphous yearnings less than a week before in this very wing as the man’s nose alighted upon his neck, as he took the soft hair between his fingers, as he breathed deep the much weaker but undeniably settling smell of his mate…

    Snape pulled back suddenly, face red, and cleared his throat. “I hope the Aurors treat you well, Potter. I will see you at breakfast on the… morrow.”

    ‘ _On the_ morrow _?_ ’ Harry repeated to himself internally as Snape promptly swept out of the privacy curtains and right out of the wing as well. He wondered what could have freaked the man out so much, wondering if perhaps he still smelled like blood, and then realized with a sudden shock that _his body down below_ had definitely enjoyed the other wizard’s closeness — Snape must have somehow smelled his growing erection! Harry groaned and flopped back against the bed, how _embarrassing_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that this chapter passes muster :)
> 
> The decision to have Malfoy make a move like this... at first I had planned to have him get away with it with just a fiercely-controlled scolding from Snape about how Draco wasn't being 'subtle' enough. But then... all too often in fiction authors will write their antagonists raping, attempting murder, kidnapping, or otherwise maiming the main character and not even receive detention. Getting off scot free: 'nothing we can do about it, you're an Omega, (these fics always capitalize the gender, I've noticed) you aren't even afforded the same rights as a wild animal in the eyes of the law' and I get the opposite of a justice boner when I read it (justice flaccidity?) and I couldn't have anything but the *attempt* at doing what is lawfully realistic here. That is not to say that justice will be served... you'll have to wait to see if that happens. And also this is not to knock those stories! They are wild and dramatic and I eat them up, nom nom nom. That's just not what I had in mind for this one.
> 
> Also: Why did Draco attack when he's such a coward/not-a-killer in the books? In my mind I see it as this... Draco desperately wants to win against Harry. Harry has an 'easy button' by way of pinching his neck and biting his gland. Had that shield not been there Harry would have been very unfortunately bonded to the Slytherin within seconds and (in Draco's thoughts) completely susceptible to his commands unlike before. It was a shiny, big ole button and he tried his best to push it. There's another layer to his contempt that will be very briefly discussed next chapter.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry recovers in the hospital wing, and is interviewed by Aurors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this were a published book, I think most of this chapter would be scrapped by an editor who thought it is redundant information. Still, I enjoyed writing Harry dealing with the beginnings of the justice process, so even if not a lot of *new* information is given, the undercurrents to the questioning can still be enjoyed.

# Chapter Twelve

* * *

* * *

    “Well, he was certainly in a rush,” the Headmaster said jovially, surprising Harry again with his appearance. “Perhaps it is for the good, we do not want him leaving just as they arrive, after all.”

    “Yeah,” he said awkwardly.

    “Now, about the upcoming interview… the best way to tell a — hmm… _difficult_ story is to just tell the truth, and not to volunteer _upsetting_ information unless it is specifically asked for. Do you understand, Harry?”

    “Yes, sir.” In other words, say exactly what Malfoy did to him and don’t proactively lie about his rescue unless they ask about that part. He relaxed a bit, knowing that Dumbledore thought he might not have to perform any mental gymnastics to convince them his mate was nowhere to be seen that night after all.

    “Very good.” Dumbledore twitched his wand, and Harry’s ears briefly buzzed, making him realize that Snape's privacy spell had been up that entire time.

    “Now, I am very curious, how do you feel about your place in this tournament? I have just realized we haven’t said a word to each other about it.”

    Harry sat himself up again, propping his pillows against the bars at the head of the bed and settling against them. “I don’t much like it,” he said finally. “I had wanted to put my name in, sure. But I didn’t — mostly because I knew your Age Line wasn’t going to be broken, but also because I _am_ only a fourth year. It was just a fantasy. Now I _am_ in, and wondering who did it? And why? And everyone hates me for it — even Ron! And I am just wondering… why does it always have to be me? Fourth year in a row where something _deadly_ swirls around me, and not all of them can be explained by...  _you_ know. Though this year is shaping up to be most dangerous yet,” he said bitterly.

    “Mm,” Dumbledore agreed. “Between the tournament, your ‘remedial Potions’ accident last week and now Mr. Malfoy, things have been rather busy for you lately. As far as your other concerns, my boy, I —”

    The doors to the hospital wing banged open, and Dumbledore stood with a frown, wand out as shouts reached their ears.

    “Where is he? Where is Draco? Ah, Dumbledore, I swear — you’re through. You’re _finished._ Where _is my son_?”

    Harry’s breathing came fast. Lucius Malfoy had been confirmed as a former Death Eater by Snape... and Harry knew after this past summer at the world cup that he had immense pull with the minister. Knowing that he was here to support his son, and the possibility that he _might_ be able to get Draco off and have Dumbledore sacked the way he was threatening had a tight lump of fear growing in Harry’s throat.

    “Good evening, Lucius. I will, of course, escort you to your son’s bed right away. He is just over here, in a private room.”

    “What have you done to him?”

    “Only a simple stunning spell, from which he has awoken normally. The Aurors will be here soon and we needed to be sure he would be as well, hence the room—”

    “Are you implying that my son is somehow _guilty_ of this ludicrous crime?”

    “I did catch him in the act of ripping off Mr. Potter’s robes. Forced claiming and mating is a very serious offence.”

    “He was probably only trying to _help_ the boy! I heard there was blood —”

    “And Mr. Potter’s testimony that Draco attacked him and attempted to bite through his shield before casting the Severing Charm on him and then attempting again?”

    “I will have none of this ridiculous nonsense spewed out where anyone can hear. My son is _innocent_.”

    “As you wish. When the Auror’s get here we may adjourn with young Draco to my office, if that is your preference.”

    “And his head of house? Why is he not here to see that my son is taken proper care of when all else would cast him out as an enemy?”

    “I can send for him now, if you wish. I’ll also send for Harry’s head of house as well…”

    Dumbledore trailed off as a _‘step, thunk, step, thunk,’_ sounded outside the hospital wing, growing louder until Moody entered and growled out a welcome.

    “Ah! Lucius… been a long time, hasn’t it? A long time… you’d just parted with a significant amount of money when I last saw you, hadn’t you?”

    “Moody.” Lucius’ voice came out with thinly veiled hatred, as if the man had tried to conceal how he felt about the Auror and in the end couldn’t quite manage it.

    “Of course, you’re probably thinking of doing the same thing now, aren’t you? Not on my watch… justice will be done… stick to your wand, that’s what I say… if Draco did something he should be man enough to own up to it, defend his actions with pride…”

    “ _My son_ didn't do anything!”

    “Well we're about to find out, aren't we? Here comes two Aurors now…”

    He must have been seeing them with his magical eye, for they didn't enter the room for another thirty seconds. Each silent moment that passed waiting made Harry worry about that eye more and more. Moody _hated_ Snape. If his eye could see so far… if he came to know they were mates — that Snape was allowed to be _alone_ with Harry, unsupervised — how much trouble would he bring down upon them?

    “Ah, Kingsley! And the ever lovely Nymphadora —”

    “ _Tonks._ ”

    “— thank you for coming on such short notice. Shall we adjourn to my office? Lucius do you still wish to have Severus join us? I should have him bring a truth potion along…”

    “ _That will not be necessary_...”

    “Then, off we go! For Mr. Potter's sake I should wish to silence young Mr Malfoy until we are a ways from the hospital wing, he's resting, you see…”

    “Resting,” Moody confirmed after a second. Harry, who was totally not resting, gave a cheeky wave at the curtains in the direction of his voice, and the man coughed — Harry thought in order to cover a laugh.

    Soon after they left Madam Pomfrey came to check on his new scar and give him a set of pajamas to wear. “Another awful pair of trousers — I only say this Mr. Potter because I _know_ your relatives have the resources to replace them...” Harry swore that the next Friday he was going to wear some of his clothes from Sirius just to make the woman happy just in case he got injured again.

    Harry wondered if it was sad that he half-expected to be back in a week.

    Madam Pomfrey also left a Sleeping Draught by his bedside, and mentioned that the moment the Aurors left he was to drink every last drop. He dozed without it anyway, waking with a start when several feet shuffled back into the wing and approached his bed.

    “Harry?” Dumbledore's voice came quietly.

    “I'm awake,” he said, clearing his throat when it came out as a croak.

    “Ah, but only just, it seems. These are my good friends Kingsley Shacklebolt, and —”

    “Tonks! Just call me Tonks,” interrupted the female Auror. For someone with so serious a profession, she did not have very serious hair. It was short and spiked up all over — and _pink._ Harry had never seen a witch or a wizard with an unnatural hair color before, though he felt like it fit her features quite well.

    “Hello, he said cautiously, moving to sit up again.

    “We have the statements of both Headmaster Dumbledore and Mister Malfoy,” Auror Shacklebolt said in a calm voice, “— and if you are able we'd like to hear from you as well. Would that be alright with you?”

    “Yeah — I'm not like… _traumatized_ or anything… just really angry. And grateful to have been saved.”

    Shacklebolt nodded to Tonks, and she came to sit in the chair by his bed, a muggle spiral-bound pad and biro in her hands. “You may feel your feelings about today change after a few days, and that's okay — normal. If you need someone to talk to — reach out. You are not the only one who has had this happen to them, and talking through the experience with someone sympathetic can definitely ease any lingering effects. Okay?”

    Harry nodded mutely, looking to Dumbledore who simply smiled benignly. He wondered what had come out in Malfoy's interview that might have made her give such a mushy, serious speech.

    “Mr. Malfoy has been expelled, and has been taken into custody at the Ministry,” Dumbledore said then, and Harry realized that he hadn't been Occluding. The Headmaster must have skimmed him thinking about Malfoy and incorrectly guessed he was concerned about his whereabouts. He nodded his thanks anyway, knowing the man was trying to help him feel at ease.

    “My first question for you, Harry, is, what were you doing when the incident — the attack — took place?”

    “Walking in the dungeons to my remedial Potions lesson,” Harry said promptly. “They take place after dinner, at seven, every Friday night.”

    “Poor lad. I remember when I… anyway. Can you walk me through the incident? How did it begin?”

    “I was walking and suddenly there was a hard pinch on my neck from behind — I hadn't heard him approach, hadn't seen him, but he pushed me into the wall —” Harry used his palm against his face to indicate smacking into the wall nose-first.

    “Then he said some stuff… about us being the only unmated alpha and omega. I think he was insulted I wasn’t his true mate, even with no one else available. He said I’d be ‘under his control forever’ or something like that, and then I felt something pushing down on my shield, then it stopped and I heard him spitting. He said something about me having a shield on, I can't remember what, and I said something — ‘you bit me?’ — maybe. He…”

    Harry glanced to Dumbledore then, wondering what he should say about _pushing_ Malfoy away when such a thing is supposedly impossible. “— He was blown away from me then, a couple meters, I — I think it may have been accidental magic because no one else was around and I was really, really mad when I realized what had almost happened. Then he got back up… I said — er… ‘what the fuck’ to him — sorry, Professor.”

    “An extraordinary circumstance,” the Headmaster said, waving his apology away.

    “Um. And then, Malfoy told me to shut up, that Moody wasn't there to save me, and that I was _his_. He said it like that: ' _mine_.’ I… think I was in shock, I didn't have my wand out, in fact —” Harry looked around for his robes which had been spelled off his body.

    “Have no fear, my boy. Your wand is in the keeping of Poppy.” Dumbledore turned to Shacklebolt then. “She also has the items of clothing Harry was wearing at the time of the incident.”

    Shacklebolt nodded. “We'll submit the clothing and the wand readings as evidence.”

    Tonks, whose Muggle pen had been flying across the pages of her notebook the entire time, looked over to Harry again. “So, Mister Malfoy said that retired-Auror Moody was not there to save you, and that you were his. What happened next?”

    “He cast the Severing charm — _Diffindo_ — at me. After it hit I screamed and fell backwards, and he jumped on top of me. I don’t remember how long that was, or if he said anything… all I knew was that he was trying to get at my neck and he wouldn’t get off no matter how hard I pushed at him.”

    “Do you need to take a break?” Tonks said kindly. Harry blinked.

    “No, I think I’m okay.” He frowned at them all. Did it _look_ like he needed a break?

    “If I may, I do believe that is where I appeared on the scene,” Dumbledore said kindly.

    “We already have your statement,” said Shacklebolt firmly. Dumbledore nodded serenely, and took a yellow candy from his pocket — must be one of his Sherbet Lemons, Harry thought — and popped it in his mouth.

    “I must say, you’re handling this far better than I would have thought,” Tonks said, her previously calm voice taking on a bit of a chipper tone. “Other omegas I’ve interviewed in similar circumstances…”

    Harry shrugged. How can he say to them that he was used to it? That he even _expected_ for someone to try their best to hurt him? He didn’t feel sad about it — it just was, and then he moved on.

    “Well, we have up to when he was on top of you, trying to get to your neck, what then?”

    “There was… a red flash. Malfoy collapsed. Professor Dumbledore was there.”

    “Mmhmm…”

    “And, er… he asked me if Malfoy succeeded. He was looking at my neck, where my gland was, so I said no. We were both levitated to the hospital wing, where Madam Pomfrey helped me drink a potion that healed the cut — Wiggenweld, I think.” Harry felt like everyone could hear the half-truths and omissions rattling around in his brain. Nervously, he _pushed_ at his magic and Occluded, even though he knew it wouldn’t help him lie the same way it would an ordinary Occlumens.

    “That gets us up to speed, I think,” Tonks said then, “— but we were told of a separate, connected incident between Mister Malfoy and yourself, earlier today. Can you tell me about that?”

    “He and the other Slytherin fourth years were waiting for me outside the classroom.”

    “Was the door locked?”

    “No, Professor Snape was inside already, the door was wide open.”

    “So they appeared to be waiting for something.”

    “Me, I think. They all had on these new badges, on their robes, that said Cedric Diggory is the real Hogwarts champion, or something. When they pushed down on the top it changed to say ‘Potter stinks.’”

    “I see.” Tonk’s pen scribbled some more. “What a prat.”

    “ _Tonks_.”

    “Sorry,” she said to her partner, though her grin implied the opposite. “So, they showed you the badges. What occurred after that?”

    “I walked past them to go into the classroom —”

    “You mean to tell me you just let that go?” Shacklebolt said doubtfully.

    “My friend Hermione was saying a bunch of stuff, I didn't need to,” he answered defensively.

    “Hmm.”

    “Look, this behavior from Malfoy is nothing new, alright? It's like this every time I get near him. You can ask anyone in Gryffindor, they'll tell you.”

    “Alright, Harry,” Tonks said softly. “So that was it? We were under the impression that something else happened. Something that ended up with Gryffindor losing 50 points, and you receiving detention.”

    “No,” Harry said, mouth set in a stubborn line. “He pulled me back out in the hallway by the collar of my robes said he wasn't done with me. My first heat had just finished Monday night — he said he didn't smell blood yet, and that I could still be fertile and to ‘watch my back.’ Um, and then he called me a bitch.”

    Tonks screwed up her face in anger. “That's… not a nice thing to say.”

    “He's called me that a few times this year. When he says it… it doesn't saying like he's just calling me a name. It sounds like he really is _labeling_ me.”

    “It's an extremely offensive pejorative for omegas. It's a way to indicate the omega is no better than the female animals we share our instincts with. A way of saying that we are no more than controllable property.”

    “Yeah. That sounds like the stuff Malfoy was saying,” Harry said bitterly. It was interesting that Tonks was an omega, he hadn't been able to smell her at all with his nose suppressed. Seeing that she was an Auror gave him hope for his own future. His autonomy seemed so uncertain when he presented… though, he guessed it still could be if Snape insisted he become some kind of house-husband and look after their kids. Or if _Snape_ thought him a ‘bitch,’ like his fellow former Death Eater’s child.

    Harry decided to continue the story without being told. “I pushed him away from me, and he cast a hex in retaliation. I tried to duck out of the way, but Hermione had a hold on my arm and she got hit instead. I don't know what the spell was, but it made her teeth grow. Professor Snape came out then, and told her to go to the hospital wing and took fifty points from Gryffindor, and gave me a detention.”

    Tonks mouth was sour again, but not surprised, and Harry figured she must remember how Snape was before she graduated.

    Shacklebolt obviously did not share their experiences. “You mean to tell me that a _teacher_ saw all this, and punished _you_ instead?”

    It was clear he thought Harry was telling tales. Harry looked to Dumbledore, not wanting to speak ill of his mate — even to keep him safe — unless he had to.

    The Headmaster pointed his wand at the floor. “ _Muffliato_. I would greatly enjoy having you both join me for a soothing cup of tea so we can discuss this topic further. Until then — speaking frankly, it is a matter of great importance that Professor Snape’s enmity with Harry Potter be accepted and moved on from. Agreed?”

    “Professor — you _can’t_!”

    Dumbledore gave him a quelling look over his spectacles. “Do not fret, Harry. I shall not reveal more than necessary.”

    “Okay, now I really want to hear about it,” Tonks said, her bubbly personality abruptly present like a switch had been flipped. Perhaps the 'switch' had been the intrigue of secrets.

    “I have great trust in you both,” Dumbledore said gravely. “There are things even the Ministry cannot bring themselves to accept, that we are protecting against even now. I would very much like to talk with you further. I _was_ waiting… however...”

    “Let’s focus on the investigation for now. Pending our conversation, we will not pursue child endangerment charges against the teacher,” Kingsley said then. “But _only_ if the cause is great enough.”

    “Mm,” the headmaster agreed, perfectly at ease with the deal. With another jab of his wand, the spell cleared. Tonks rubbed her ears for a moment before skimming her paper to figure out where they left off.

    “After the points were taken, was that the end of it?”

    “Yeah. They still made faces, but that’s all they could do, even in front of Sn— Professor Snape. I was called away for the weighing of the wands ceremony just a few minutes later so I didn’t see Malfoy again until he attacked me.”

    “And you’re certain is was him? There was no mistaking his identity at any point?”

    “No mistake.”

    Kingsley straightened, nodding at Tonks, who then stood as well. “Well, then, if possible we’d like to speak to those present at the first incident — the threat on Harry’s virtue this afternoon. To get a conviction against the Malfoy family… we will need all the supporting evidence we can get. It helps that we’ve run the scan on Mr. Malfoy’s wand and found the Severing charm was cast last, but we’ll need to check yours as well, as well as submit your clothing for evidence removal. We’ll also need a full chart from Madam Pomfrey.”

    “I can direct you to those things, however interviewing the students must wait until the morning. I also ask that you respect Harry’s privacy in your conversations with his peers.”

    “Of course.”

    “Harry, your potion is waiting for you, I believe. Rest well.”

    “Goodnight, Professor. Goodbye, Auror Tonks, Auror Shacklebolt.”

    “So polite,” he heard Tonks comment outside his curtains. “Oof!” There was a loud crash as she knocked over a wheeled cart.

    “I thought we’d make it through a whole trip, I really did…”

    Harry, guzzling the potion, didn’t hear any more.

 

* * *

 

    He woke while it was still dark, to the sensation of hands finger-combing through his hair. He startled, until a familiar deep voice said “It’s just me, Potter.”

    “Oh, hey,” he replied, still half-asleep due to the potion’s grip, and falling back under now that he felt safe again.

    “I will protect you tonight. Rest.”

    “Mmhmm, kay…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, kind of redundant, huh? But it shows that an attempt at justice will be made... though Kingsley and Tonks will have an uphill climb against a powerful family like Draco's...


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore tests a theory and Sirius tells Harry about another one.

# Chapter Thirteen

* * *

* * *

    The next time he awoke it was morning, and he was alone. It was hard to tell if the memory he had of his mate guarding his sleep was real, or just a dream. He’d been given just a mild Sleeping Draught so _perhaps_ it could have been a dream...

    He was given the option to be released to attend breakfast the next morning, which surprised him to no end. When he asked Madam Pomfrey about it, she said that the only damage he had left to heal was all mental, and sitting in bed all day would only cement it in further. As firm and irritable as he’d felt the night before, he paused outside the Great Hall, just out of sight of anyone inside, feeling a sudden shock of nerves.

    “ _Harry_!”

    A slight form rocketed into his back, and arms came around his own, crossing over his chest to pin them to his sides. A misting of frizzy hair flowed up and over his shoulder.

    “Hey there, Hermione,” Harry said quietly as the witch let him go just long enough to turn him around and search his face worriedly.

    “I heard you didn’t come back to the tower last night! I just came from the hospital wing and Madam Pomfrey said I’d just missed you, but wouldn’t tell me what happened… Harry, are you okay?”

    “Malfoy attacked me on the way to my lesson,” he told her quietly. “Er — who told you I wasn’t there?”

    Hermione looked horrified at the news, then sympathetic at the hesitantly asked question. “It was Neville.” Harry nodded, feeling a shard of disappointment that Ron either hadn’t noticed or cared that he’d been gone during his very rough night. “Harry, what happened?” She tugged him further away from the doors, speaking in a lowered voice.

    “He tried to bite through my shield,” Harry said, fingers coming up to touch the skin over his unprotected gland. As bothersome as it was to tie in place every morning, he’d grown used to having the leather protection there. Without it, he felt  _vulnerable_ , like being naked, but worse.

    Hermione’s grip on his arm tightened. “No.”

    “Yeah,” he said. “I managed to push him away, and then he used a Severing Charm on me… right here.” He traced the line from his sternum, to shoulder, and she gasped.

    “He cut it off you?”

    Harry nodded. “But I was rescued before he could take a bite of it,” he said, hand covering his gland fully, then, as he looked over at the doors. “He’s been arrested. I don’t know who knows… I didn’t want to go in alone.”

    “Of course you won’t,” Hermione said loyally. “We’ll go in together.”

    The other fourth-year Slytherins definitely knew something was up. They glared at Harry fiercely, and though he didn’t look at them past his first searching glance, he could feel their eyes still on him for the entire meal.

    And then everything got abruptly worse.

    With the post came the Daily Prophet, which was plastered with falsified statements from Harry about mourning his parents, dating _Hermione_ , of all people —  extolingh bravery in his unconventional choice in relationship as an unmated omega — and an oddly confident soliloquy on his chances in the tournament. Harry could spot them all throughout the Hall, in the hands of irritated Hufflepuffs, sniggering Slytherins and — a very red-faced Ron Weasley.

    “I should go,” Harry said quietly to Hermione. She followed his gaze to Ron and bit her lip.

    “Surely he doesn’t think it’s —”

    Professor McGonagall interrupted her. “Mr. Potter, the Headmaster would like to speak with you in his office.”

    “Yes, Professor,” Harry said with relief. Neither Professor Snape or the Headmaster had been at the Head table, and he hoped — in the tender state his emotions were in — that he might see his mate there.

    “I’ll see you later, Harry,” Hermione said uncomfortably.

    “Seeya, Hermione.”

 

* * *

 

    “Come in, Harry,” Dumbledore’s voice called through the door as he rounded the last step.

    “How did you know it was me?” he asked as he closed the door behind him. Professor Snape was indeed sitting in front of the Headmaster’s large desk, and Harry made a beeline for the chair next to his.

    “I have my ways,” Dumbledore said enigmatically.

    Snape snorted. “The portraits told him you were coming,” he revealed, and his voice somehow held both mockery and fondness for the old man at the same time. Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled as he shook his finger at his Potions professor.

    “Severus, don’t you dare reveal all my secrets!”

    Harry smiled. This atmosphere was so much nicer than the one downstairs.

    “What did you need me for, Professors?” he asked, edging his fingers a little closer to Snape’s sleeve.

    “The Aurors have contacted us. Draco Malfoy is out of the Ministry’s custody and is back home with his parents.”

    Harry’s breath caught, before he forced himself to release it normally. Malfoy wasn’t a hardened criminal, like they had expected Sirius to have been. He was a fourteen year old boy who had seen his chance and taken it. There was no way he would be brave enough to sneak back into Hogwarts grounds to finish ruining Harry’s life. “Okay,” he said finally.

    Dumbledore’s kind face changed, to fill with pride. Harry’s chest swelled again, but this time in response to that expression which he hadn’t realized he’d wanted so badly. He looked away from it. “After our statements, Harry, the Aurors are uncomfortable with having to let him go and would like to take your year-mate’s own statements as soon as possible to complete their case and bring him to court. We thought you might enjoy this time to visit with your godfather, while the interviews take place.”

    Harry sat up straight in his chair. “Really? He can come?”

    “He is waiting on our Floo call as we speak,” Dumbledore said, nodding. “Though we thought it might be better for you to take the weekend and spend it at home.”

    “Er — is that… normal?”

    “Another child would likely have gone home immediately after being attacked,” Snape said. “Another guardian would have insisted upon it... perhaps they would have kept the child home for at least a week or more to make sure they had recovered from such a harrowing personal experience. With your relationship being as new as it is, and him not _legally_ being your guardian, Black wished to defer to whatever it is you feel that you need.”

    “I want to go,” he whispered, moving his fingers over that final amount to place his hand over Snape’s forearm. “Are you okay with me being so far away so soon after...?”

    The Professor’s mouth twitched. “I have to be. After all, I won’t see you at all during the summers — and those awful Muggles. As difficult as I find the idea of releasing you to another _unattached_ alpha, he could be… a good source of support for you.”

    Harry peered at him. “Did you lose any teeth, biting that out?”

    “Shut up, brat.”

    “Lovely,” Dumbledore said then, smiling benignly at them both. “Now, before you head off, there is another matter I would like to discuss with you, Harry.”

    “Yes, sir?”

    “I was hoping you could recreate the experiment which brought you to the hospital wing last week.” He conjured a ball — stone, this time, and floated it over to Harry.

    “I don’t want to get hurt again,” he said warily.

    “Don’t withdraw your magic until we’ve vanished the sphere,” Snape warned. “Albus has a talent or two in seeing things others cannot. We’re hoping to figure out why your magic absorbed the ball, thinking it was a part of itself.”

    “It is important to help understand your unique talent,” the Headmaster said kindly, “and to prevent other accidents in it’s training.”

    Harry nodded, and _pushed_ in the way that was now as familiar as moving any other limb. He bumped the sphere in his hand first, then remembered to work _with_ his magic and then asked it nicely to wrap around the ball instead of directing it.

    “Now, how does that compare to the last time?” Dumbledore said. His voice was soft, just like Snape’s had been when he’d practiced with his magic last time. He wondered what it looked like to the two men, that they thought they had to be quiet not to disturb him.

    “Umm,” he said slowly. “My magic isn’t inside the ball this time. Is it because it’s stone?”

    “Could be,” Dumbledore said, though Harry thought his tone indicated that he didn’t think that was the case. “Can you drop it into your hand without issue?”

    Harry tried, holding his hand out beneath the ball, and his magic obliged to let go as soon as he thought to ask. “Seems like,” he said, confused.

    “Let’s try again. Severus? The same as mine, please.”

    Harry looked to his mate, who conjured a ball identical to the one already in his hand. The Professor handed it over with a smug look, and Harry compared the two, noting even the grain and veining in the granite were exactly the same.

    “And that is what we call ‘displaying,’” the Headmaster said informatively, a slight twist to his mouth.

    Snape sniffed. “Don’t be jealous.”

    “Jealous that you copied me?”

    “It _is_ a very good copy,” Harry said quietly to Snape. He knew the men were having their fun — and really, it _was_ neat for Harry to see the interaction play out — but he privately thought Dumbledore’s ‘displaying’ comment had some merit. If his mate had been trying to impress him, according to his books he needed to acknowledge it.

    “The winner is declared,” the Headmaster said mournfully. Harry frowned. Had it been a true competition after all? “Try with Severus’s ball, Harry.”

    Harry set his confusion aside and did as he was asked. “Ah, my magic is inside this time.”

    “Will it let go of the ball?” Severus asked next, wand out and pointing at the ball in case it became a problem.

    Harry asked his magic to release it, and felt nothing in return. “It won’t let go.”

    “ _Evanesco._ ”

    Dumbledore lifted a quill from his desk. “This was not conjured. Will you try with this?”

    Experimentally Harry stretched out his magic, and picked up the feather from the professor’s hand. “How peculiar,” the man said, shaking his hand out.

    “Did it hurt?” Harry asked worriedly. He dropped the feather effortlessly to his hand, and withdrew his magic slowly enough that it didn’t throw him anywhere.

    “No, but it did tingle a bit. Will you let Severus feel?”

    Harry turned to his mate, but for all his nervousness he received a cool, raised eyebrow in return. “Hand out, then, sir?”

    The hand he was presented with had those long, familiar fingers and nary a callus to be seen. Harry knew it was his wand hand and swallowed at the sign of trust. He really didn’t want to screw this up. He gently pushed out his magic to meet the man’s skin, silently begging his magic not to hurt his mate.

    Snape curved his hand around the blob of his magic, moving his hand around the outside of it to feel out its size. “I feel no tingling,” he said finally. “I merely come up against a barrier.”

    “Harry, can you feel Professor Snape’s hand?”

    Snape’s hand froze, and Harry thought he saw a blush rise up on the man’s cheeks. “No, I can only feel where my magic is — actually that’s a little off — I can _tell_ where my magic is. I just know it, but there’s no real _feeling_ involved. I can’t see it, either. Professor Snape looks like he’s petting the air.”

    “I wasn’t _petting_ anything,” he replied indignantly, withdrawing his hand with a snap. There was a definite pinkening of his face now. Harry thought it was interesting that because of his pale complexion it appeared so _pretty_ a color, rather than a ruddy red like he himself turned. “I was merely ascertaining the dimensions of your magic’s corporeal form.”

    “Yes, of course, Severus,” Dumbledore placated the man. “Now, Harry, a little more risky. Would you try to use your magic to pick up Severus’s hand?”

    Harry’s brows snapped down. “No.”

    “No, _sir,_ Potter,” Snape corrected. Harry briefly noticed the man wasn’t arguing with him, just his lack of respect.

    “No, _sir_ , then. I’m not going to pick up my mate's hand, only for it to get stuck in my magic the way his ball did and have it be that the only way for it to come out is to _cut it off_ or absorb it into my ribcage. I will not do it.”

    “And if I tell you I do not believe that to be the case?”

    “You don’t _know_. Sir," he added after a glance from Snape. "I won’t risk him.”

    Snape raised his hand again, unerringly finding where Harry’s magic had shifted as his body had, and placing it calmly over the surface. A line deepened between his brows as both he and Harry seemed to realize at the same time how blindly accurate he had been, but Dumbledore only stroked his beard thoughtfully. Finally, Snape spoke. “It is my choice Potter. I trust the Headmaster and… I trust you. Tell your magic to hold up my hand.”

    Harry bit his lip, deeply uncertain, but he obeyed the soft demand. ‘ _Please don’t hurt my mate,_ ’ he pleaded with his magic again. As he requested it, he felt his magic mould around Snape’s hand and then as he directed where his magic should flow, Snape’s hand went there also.

    “How odd,” Snape said, wiggling his fingers. His magic made way for them, yielding around them without even a millimeter’s separation, yet held his wrist and palm exactly in place. “Very strange.”

    Harry slowly retrieved his magic, moving by minute amounts until he was sure Snape’s hand was his own and he had not somehow consumed it. As the last of it slowly sank back under his skin and he completely released his control of it, he slumped in relief.

    “You did well,” Snape said then, rubbing his freed hand with the other. He cleared his throat, seemingly embarrassed about whatever he had to say next. “Your alpha is pleased with you.”

    It was odd how much those words meant to Harry. Snape could have said ‘I’m pleased with you’ and it would have been more personal, less like a mark of ownership, but Harry felt a little bomb of relief and happiness and pride well up in himself all the same, and he knew it had _everything_ to do with the phrasing and his biology as an omega. “Wow,” he said. “Does that work in reverse? Like if I say ‘your omega is pleased with you,’ would that affect _you_ the same way?”

    His cheeks went pink again. Harry found his eyes drawn to the color. “It would not.” Harry felt himself pout and then sucked his lips into his mouth to avoid the expression. “As an alpha I am affected by other means. You have already stumbled on a few, just being yourself.”

    The color hadn’t faded from his cheeks and a slight edge entered his voice and Harry thought Snape must be quite embarrassed to be saying such things in front of the quietly observing Dumbledore. “Thank you,” he said quietly, pitching his voice so low that he was sure only his mate could hear. Snape met his eyes, then, and nodded once, to indicate he heard.

    “Well, this has certainly been illuminating for me,” Dumbledore said then, smiling warmly. “My, how things change… well, Harry, you should get on your way. I am wondering, before you go, if you wouldn’t mind parting with a bit of your hair? Just one will do.”

    “Er —” The Polyjuice potion of his third year came to mind, then.

    “I have but one final test. Severus, I’ll need one from you as well. Do not worry, afterwards the hairs will be safely done away with.”

    Snape thinned his lips but ran his fingers through his hair until he pulled his hand away and a loose hair was tangled around his fingers. Harry, whose hair was short, had a harder time finding a loose hair hanging out on his head and in the end had to pluck one.

    “Alright then,” Harry said after handing his over. Dumbledore promptly began winding the hairs around two knobs on the side of one of his silver instruments, which promptly began to whirr as the second hair made contact. “When should I be back?”

    “Before dinner tomorrow,” Snape answered. “And you have detention with me at seven.”

    “Oh. Nice,” Harry said, completely earnestly. Dumbledore chuckled.

    “Have a good weekend, my boy,” he said then.

    “Um, bye,” Harry said, casting a quick glance at his mate before heading over to the fireplace. “Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place!”

    “Sirius?” he called out after picking himself up off the floor.

    “Harry?” The man came up the stairwell to the kitchen, smiling tentatively. “You look… good.”

    “Should have seen me last night,” Harry said, making a ‘dead’ face with his tongue sticking out. He hoped to cheer up his godfather with the gesture, but the man only looked grimmer.

    “Yes, I heard about that. And how Malfoy bought the boy's freedom this morning.”

    The hair on the back of Harry’s neck rose at the growl that entered Sirius’s voice. It was not a pleasant sensation, like when Snape growled. Probably because his instincts didn’t register his godfather as a parent figure yet, and definitely not a mate. In any case, he wanted to steer the man away from making sounds like that for now.

    “The Aurors will be questioning my classmates today and tomorrow,” Harry said, scratching at the back of his neck. “I want them to have the best case they can — for me, and for Snape, but I don’t want the extra negative attention that will come from all this. It’s already bad enough with the tournament...”

    “It sounds like you’ve been having a hard time this year,” the man said then. It sounded measured, like maybe someone like Remus had rehearsed it with him, but it set off a storm inside Harry anyway, as an electric ride of emotion rose up and poured forth from his mouth.

    Surprisingly, the first thing to come tearing out of his mouth wasn’t about Malfoy, or the tournament, or even how he never settled things with Snape after the complicated feelings he’d experienced during his heat. It was Ron.

    He _loved_ Ron, he ranted to Sirius. He hated him too. He was angry that the redhead was jealous and wished he could see the good in his mate like Harry could. He wished he could tell the boy his secrets — he wished he could _trust_ him. He didn’t cry; he was too angry for that. And Sirius _listened_ , his eyes which still looked as if they had known hell on earth staring back at Harry’s with concern and care.

    Then, they talked about the article published that morning, and Harry's idyllic sounding board started bouncing back ideas that he didn't mesh well with.

    “At least you’ve got her, right? Hermione? I’m really glad to see you pursuing a relationship away from that—”

    “Stop, Sirius,” Harry interrupted firmly, teeth bared a bit. “Hermione is just a friend — besides my mate, she’s my _only_ friend in the school right now—”

    “Harry — Snape’s what, thirty-five? And your _professor_. He _cannot_ be your friend.”

    “Thirty-four, I think — anyway, he’s one of a sort,” Harry denied. “It’s odd, yeah, but he’s my mate. Of course he’s my friend.”

    “I’m telling you Harry, he doesn’t think of it that way. At most you’re a responsibility.”

    That really stung. “Why are you telling me this?”

    “ _Because_ , Harry, it’s really important to recognise that you are _very_ young. You are a child to him. Your very age precludes a man like Snape from regarding you as a friend. In his eyes you are not his equal at all. I’m not saying this to be mean to you—”

    “Fuck if I can tell!”

    “— _but_ to _remind_ you Harry that Snape has all the power in your relationship. You _must_ take care with how much you give yourself over to the man because you _cannot_ take it back —”

    “Maybe I wouldn't want to!” Harry snarled. “He's been good to me! Maybe not _nice_ , exactly, but he's taken care of me—”

    “Like a very important possession, yes. Harry you must know, Snape is not ever going to be a ' _nice'_   man. I've known him now twenty-three years —”

    “Oh yeah, and all of that _you've_ been super ‘ _nice_ ’ yourself, huh?”

    Sirius, who had remained surprisingly calm and persuasive the entire conversation, rocked back a bit at that, perhaps surprised that Harry would even know about more than just the present antagonism. “This isn't about me, or even who I've been, back then. This is about protecting _you_ , Harry —”

    “ _I don't need protecting_! Not from him. Not from my mate.”

    “ _Yes_ , you do. Because of what I was saying, how you'll never be his equal in his eyes. This isn't a normal true mate situation, Harry. Albus mentioned… and I think it might be true — that the scar in your head might be connected to Voldemort. It's possible that Magic _accidentally_ paired you because it also sensed the connection between _you_ and Snape's _Dark Mark_!”

    Sirius breathed heavily in the resultant silence while Harry grappled with this new, entirely unwelcome theory.

    “Dumbledore thinks Snape's my mate because he has the Dark Mark?”

    “The only person you had a social connection with who also has a _magical_ connection to Voldemort. The magic got confused, that's  _all_.  You're not _real_ mates, Harry. And Snape knows this.”

    “He knows Dumbledore's theory.”

    “Well — no, I don't think Dumbledore wanted either of you to know, to tell you the truth, but he can't possibly think you two are — where are you going?”

    “Back to my mate.”

    “Harry didn't you hear anything I said? You can't run to him every time something goes wrong, that's called codependency—”

    Harry, filled with a deep black rage he was just _barely_ controlling, smirked as Snape-ishly as he possibly could with a handful of Floo powder in his hand. “No, Sirius, it's called _love_. Hogwarts! Headmaster's Office!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been going through rough times recently... a little mood upswing with loving family this week helping me post this. Thanks for your patience... You have been so supportive in your comments, the positivity truly is inspiring.


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